


Straying Huntsmen

by Whynoteh



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-05-16 18:29:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 21,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14816591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whynoteh/pseuds/Whynoteh
Summary: Bloodborne-esque RWBY. Weiss is a heir and a hunter, Ruby is a farmhand cursed by a werewolf. Weiss see's an oppurtunity.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks go out to DementedQueen for beta reading, it really makes the difference.

Rain poured from the tip of her white, tricorn hat into the bouncing mud at her feet. A sheen of water rolled over her long leather coat, down passed a weighted silver rapier that sung its metallic song at the beat of every raindrop. Arms folded, foot tapping, the heiress hid her shivering under a guise of reluctant patience, the brass lantern in front of her burning away its irresistible incense above a bright flame.

  
A cloud-choked night one day late of the full moon, Weiss waited for the approach of the beast that butchered the farmhand that resided on the edge of her father’s serfdom, and just as she considered her hunt to be fruitless, a ragged figure appeared sauntering towards her. Weiss eyed the figure, the anxiety of waiting finally gone, but waited to confirm her suspicions.

  
“Speak knave.” Her demand came in clear through the downpour.

  
Coming closer, she could make out the stranger somewhat, a thin figure dragging a farming scythe, donning torn rags and a burlap hood. Too cold of weather for such apparel, the heiress knew no decent stranger would dress as such.

  
Weiss’s blue eyes flickered down to the lantern of incense. “Not even a hungry animal would come to a smell so putrid,” she mused in the practiced husky voice of a man. Her arms unfolded, a left hand resting upon her weapon. “Come feed beast, the thirst must be unbearable.”

  
An aggravated growl came from deep within the stranger’s chest. He splashed a bare foot forward in the mud, taking his scythe by two hands.

  
“Have you not found your proper claws Wolf?!” Weiss growled back.

  
A spray of water gold in the lanterns light threw itself behind the stranger as he sprinted forward, right over the lantern and brought his farming implement down, more as a hammer than a blade, towards Weiss. A quick draw and the effort of both hands on her sword blocked the scythe before it smashed her head, but the heiress dropped to her knee, spattering black dots all over her lower body and her white attire. The stranger pulled back and tried hammering again, only for his scythe to be slapped to the side by a bladed handguard and a counter thrust.

  
The stranger staggered back, but the noble sprung from her kneel into a lunge and made up the distance, poking a hole in the Wolf’s belly. Weiss didn’t hear any statement of pain but caught a glimpse of gritted teeth. With a downward swing, the stranger swept up a spray of black mud that broke the line of sight between the fighters, scaring Weiss into backing up only for the handle of the scythe to pierce the curtain of water like a spear and punch the heiress in her gut anyway, albeit with less force than had Weiss stood still.

  
“Clever fiend!” she coughed.

  
The handle still jutted out, the stranger stumbling forward, Weiss took the chance to step closer and inside the foe’s reach, grabbing hold of the shaft with her right hand and tackling the stranger. The foe stumbled back but Weiss pulled on the handle, disarming the man while tripping him into a punch from Weiss’s bladed hand guard. Blood flew from the man’s face, quickly becoming invisible in the black night as he flipped midair onto the ground, back first. Pirouetting, the heiress turned and dropped once more to her knee to deliver a merciful stab to his heart.

  
Reacting far quicker than most, the man kicked with one leg into his opponent’s wrist, bouncing back the stab, then kicked with the other and caught the heiress in the mouth, launching her backwards several feet. Both breathing heavily and scrambling to their feet, Weiss saw the man without his hood and the light of the lantern casted one half of his face in gold light and the other in complete blackness much like a painted theatre mask. His muddy face was hard to make out and marred with gunk, but Weiss recognized a degree of androgyny that might have meant the foe was more heifer than bull.

  
For a minute, they eyed each other, slowly starting a circular pace centered on the lantern, the stranger rearming the scythe Weiss had dropped during her short flight. The heiress felt a cold chill down her back as the icy water soaked through the seams of her leather attire. The stranger, gritted bloody teeth bared, felt a rush of clarity return to mind thanks in part to the open gash now adorning his face.

  
Weiss darted first, rapier extending from her arm as though it was all one rigid length. The Wolf parried the tip to the side with the reach granted by her tool, locking the blade in his armpit and pushing into the heiress, her feet gaining no traction in the mud and taking a wide stance to avoid falling once more. He tried pushing farther, running into her while she maintained stance and slid as though on ice. Lifting a knee, Weiss caught the foe in the stomach with a muffled thud, falling into a hunched huddle inside the stranger’s space.

  
He slammed his free elbow into the heiress’s back a half dozen times, a quiet crack garnering a scream from the white clad fighter as she finally spun out of the lock, her coat twirling around her and flinging dirt in every direction.

  
She was not used to beasts who fought with skill and instinct.

  
She was trained to fence, she was trained to hunt, but she could not handle both at the same time.

  
She needed to even the field now she was nearing her pain threshold. Adrenaline would eventually subside and she would be worse than dead.

Back peddling, Weiss took a proper fencing stance after a moment of attempted composure. “Come Wolf. You have a blade, use it why don’t ye?”  
The stranger hesitated, the lingering madness and hunger of the full moon leaving all rational thoughts perverted by frenzy. Somehow, in some way, it made sense to use the scythe to finish the heiress.

  
Charging on, footsteps slapping all the way, the Wolf swung his blade to hook and maim his opponent. Getting creative with her hand guard, the loose definitions of what constituted a parry, Weiss redirected the swing over her head and to the side, a quick backswing tracing a line across the Wolf’s cheeks and the bridge of his nose, blood filling the seam a moment later and washing into the mud caked on his face.

  
His fury signaled with a yip and a growl, he lashed out with a cavalcade of slashes, Weiss dodged and parried all his attempts to his dismay and frustration. Lazy backsteps, sassy side steps, and playful parries did her well, a spring coming to her step. Attempting a different angle of attack, the stranger swiped upwards, the tip catching Weiss’s hat and throwing it behind her as she barely dodged. Carrying the momentum in a breakthrough of technique, the stranger kept the scythe soaring in its ark over his head, pivoting on his heel as the blade made a perfect circle around his body, coming back to Weiss with surprising speed.

  
Unfortunately for him, she saw it coming.

  
She got on the wrong side of the Wolf and stabbed at him, his follow up attack missing wide and throwing his balance as he pulled his head back away from the riposte. Weiss whistled as she watched the stranger fall into a backwards cartwheel away from her.

  
“Unique,” she whispered.

  
The stranger stumbled into a low stance, scythe behind him, silver eyes darting from Weiss’s face to her sword and to her legs.

  
She wiped the brown and red mess from her lips and chin. “Try it.” Weiss cracked a smile with blood-stained teeth.

  
With incredible speed, the Wolf exploded towards the heiress, frightening her. She dropped to her knee and stabbed the ground in a last ditch effort. The low flying blade that was aimed for her legs instead hooked the stiff rapier blade, Weiss bracing the handle for dear life.

  
The Wolf’s momentum did not stop, his body like the bucket of water on the end of a spinning rope. His knee and outstretched foot drawing a perfect curve in the mud, a gold and black spray blooming like a flower as he circled around Weiss, the heiress scrambling on her knees to outrun the curve of the blade as it raced towards her.

  
Skidding to a messy stop, the stranger crouched low like Weiss, then with superhuman strength pulled on the grounded sword, uprooting it and toppling its wielder. Bloodlust flooded his veins as he made a break for the killing blow, jumping into a downward strike.

  
Weiss rolled over and let the stranger fall on her blade.

  
Howling, the stranger stood with haste, but lost his footing and collapsed. Bloodied feet kicked hopelessly as shaking hands pulled out the silver blade. A weak cry was drowned out by the rain, the thin body curling up into a scared fetal position.

  
Panting, Weiss pushed herself up reluctantly. Limping over, she picked up her muddied sword, picked up her muddied hat, stood over the Wolf, and took aim.

  
Hesitation.

  
Sluggishly, the heiress kneeled beside the fallen beast. She no longer cared about being messy, her white attire entirely black and brown, indistinguishable from a well layered peasant. Reaching within the belly of the beast, the body tried pulling against Weiss’s attempts, but failed. She pried away a hand and checked the finger nails.

  
Long claws were actively pulling back into the flesh.

  
Weiss tilted her head at the Wolf, her white mess of a mane falling to one side. She was simply too impressed by the fight to just end it there. Curious to his face, she turned his head and wiped the mud and blood the best she could, her own hands mostly smearing the mud and the blood refilling the clean spot she made. Rather, her wipe broke the base of the filth and the pelting rain began to wash it away one spot at a time.

  
A young girl.

  
Weiss sympathized with the confusion. In her hunter’s garb, most mistook the heiress for a effeminate young lord.

  
She looked over the girl once more, biting her lip at the bleeding hole in the girl’s mid chest. Weiss knew how painful that could be.

  
Weiss thought to herself. The fight was over, she bested the beast. It was hard, and probably would’ve gone fairly differently had she been equipped with her revolver. The threat could be easily removed permanently once she finished off the girl, but…

  
She maintained most of her humanity one day after the full moon. The bloodlust and strength were unavoidable, but this girl mostly maintained a human form and retained thought, using a scythe to fight instead of claws. The taint must’ve been weak with her, she mused.

  
Maybe she didn’t have to kill her.

  
What if she brought her to the estate and kept her in lock?

  
What if she held witness to the girl during her waking hours?

  
What if she could employ her skill? At the cost of her freedom of course, but still…

  
“Well Wolf, looks as though you get to live another day.”

  
Weiss balled up her fist, then decked the downed girl, putting her into a feverish sleep. It was time to get the beast home before the true pain of her fractured ribs paralyzed her.


	2. Chapter 2

After a mile of forest road came a mile of farmland, followed by a mile of village buildings that steadily improved in creation and design. Weiss, now astride her dark blanketed horse she had left sheltered in a far flung stable, wobbled in her saddle as she came upon the cobblestone bridge that passed over the moat and through the short wall that ran the perimeter of Vale. Two guards who could not help but to hear the clipping and clopping of the oncoming steed stepped forward with torches, spears in hand.

While the pounding rain had done some work to take off the mud, her white attire had been at least temporarily stained brown and black, even the feather in her tricorn crimped and ruined. With her collars up, red scarf wrapped, and hat down, she could’ve passed as a short brigand, but the guards were expecting her.

“Stand down philistines, it’s me.” She was tired, but still authoritative, her words mean, but her tone familiar. It was to her advantage that everyone expected her to be cold, never taking her insults to heart as they believed it to be part of her aesthetic. If only they knew she meant it all.

They eased up, leaning into their spears. They appeared comfortable in the deluge of water, their unflattering cloaks designed around ceaseless rainfall. “Did yer’ get tha beast Heir Schnee?”

The slow and steady pace of her horse never faltered, much like the distant stare in her bored eyes. “Indeed. Rescued a peasant too.”

As she passed they noticed the body strapped and covered to the back of the steed, seemingly dead, with a loose bloody foot dangling on the side. “How does one rescue someone and they be dead?” asked the other guard.

“She’s not dead, just injured,” Weiss retorted slowly.

The first guard stepped over to the other, elbowing him with a wide grin. “Oh looky, ‘prince bringing home a helpless damsel, maybe hoping to breathe some ‘life’ into her, how noble.” The other guard took a moment to realize what his friend was implying before sighing heavily.

“Have you ever heard of this invention ‘soap?’ I suggest you try washing your mouth with it.” The heiress trotted on, the interaction already on the log of unimportant things to be forgotten promptly.

Weiss waited for the sound of her hoof steps to change as she passed through the gate, the horse shoes clanking against stones to echo off of the gothic homes and businesses and reverberate off into the many dark alleyways. Instead, the patter of millions of raindrops bounced between the edifices so anyone in the street couldn’t hear themselves think. It wasn’t a new sensation to her, she had experienced that exact feeling many times, but she couldn’t help to shiver with a repressed giggle.

Navigating the streets by guard’s torchlights, she found the gates already open to her father’s estate, a veritable castle in all but name. Her courtyard greeted her with lines of thorny rose bushes and a central water fountain wrapped around a statue of her great grandfather. Staying true to her professional, ingrained, hunting ritual, she steered her colt around the statue and fountain, mumbling to herself about how whoever decided to put a statue in the middle of the path where carriages routinely pass should’ve been publicly executed along with the artisan’s guild that sponsored them.

Stable hands came from cover to grab the reins of Weiss’s horse, one of the young boy’s face contorting from excitement to confusion to worry once he noticed the passenger’s hanging bloody feet. The heiress called to the friendly face on the estate’s front door steps for help. “Jaune! Make yourself useful for once!”

The knight who was tasked with waiting for Weiss’s arrival had dozed off at some point as he laid on the rain soaked steps. Jolting to attention, he drunkenly tripped his way down to his liege, awaiting further instruction. “I- I- I’m here, I’m up, what assistance do you require?” he stammered along the way.

With heartfelt groans, the horse-rider dismounted, her potentially broken ribs screaming at her to stop walking. For a moment, she rested her head against her horse, dizzy, blacking out even, before Jaune’s concerned comments came back to her ringing ears. “Uh, injured villager, carry ‘em for me.”

She helped him undo the straps binding the girl to the back of the horse, Weiss helping to ease the blanket wrapped girl into Jaune’s armor clad arms. The knight noticed how his liege had strapped the girl to the horse as though she was a sack of flour and got a glance at her mangled face, a pit of rage he wasn’t quite use to rooting itself in his chest. Through clenched teeth he asked as he bridal carried the girl up the stairs, “What was that for? This is not some boar you hunted, this is a person.”

Stepping through the tall decorated double doors reinforced with steel, Weiss let out a sigh of relief as warmth embraced her soaked, bone chilled body. “What was what— what asinine thing are you talking about now?” she shook her head, bewildered and not in the mood for conversation.

He followed her up the curving staircase of the entrance hall, banners woven to illustrate noble families’ founding moments passing them along the ascent. “I find it hard to believe he’s still alive after you toted him carelessly for god knows how long without even basic aide or care. This boy needs healing, he needs the doctor!”

The heiress flickered her eyes left and right, scanning the doorways lining the hallway with a sense of lethargicness that ran counter to her quick stride. A sigh. “That is where we are going you imbecile, and stop fretting. The girl will be fine.”

The knight kept pace but his gaze drifted briefly. Shifting his grip on the girl he managed to hold her tiny mass with one arm, freeing his other hand to pull away the layers wrapping the werewolf’s face, seeing the same as before in the form of mud and blood. Pulling a handkerchief, he smeared away the mess and realized he was in fact staring at a young maiden, beautiful in her own scared way. Through his fingerless gloves, he pressed against her face, skin icy and white. He looked around to make sure no one would see him lose his composure, his face twisting with a blend of anger and worry. He leaned in from behind Weiss, yelling in a whisper, “She’s as cold as ice, mangled, at least show some concern!”

A chuckle. “Had I known you grew a backbone as some point Jaune, I would’ve had you train to become a real knight. And when you mean concern, do you mean the same concern that lead you to leave your sister to die? Oh but wait, then you wouldn’t have been next in line to take your family’s mantle of responsibility, and you wouldn’t be here right now to assist me assist this girl, so,” Weiss cocked her head to look behind her, a single eye glaring at him from under her tricorn, “please explain to me the intricacies of your sudden need for concern.”

His face dropped, defeated silence painting his face. Jaune hung his head in a low shame.

“That’s what I thought.”

A minute passed. “Did you slay the beast?” he asked, quiet. He received no reply.

Weiss lead them to the infirmary, Weiss slamming open the door for Jaune to find his way into a dark room lit only by a three armed candelabra. Doctor Oobleck turned in his seat to look with slight surprise at the three bodies now in his room at such an ungodly hour, but reacted swiftly all the same.

“If you would Sir Arc, lay them on that bed there then get me a pot of hot water. Heir Schnee, anything I should know?” The boy did as told and ran out the door, leaving Weiss alone with the doctor.

She closed the door and crossed her arms, finding herself a comfortable posture that kept a strong presence about her. “That’s the beast. The stab wound is silver of course, so she should be returned to her senses by morning.”

The tall, tall man all but threw his chair to the bedside of the Wolf girl, his hands flying as he peeled away the wet blankets, swept her brunette bangs away, washed her face, checked her pulse, and started stitching her gaping chest wound. “And just why, Heir Schnee, did you bring the mark you sought to kill to my doorstep to save? Mercy is uncommon to you.”

“She used a scythe to fight me, her taint seems weak but she seems to have innate talent, good senses about her. Maybe I could use her.”

He at no point slowed in his handiwork, already committed to helping the person brought to his attention. “A bold notion, Heir Schnee, you wouldn’t be the first to try, the first to fail neither.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, strong talents and a weak taint is a rare combination Doctor. No one is going to miss the peasant she butchered, thus her fate isn’t sealed. I see opportunity.”

“Unscrupulous as ever Heir, unscrupulous and pragmatic, no different from your grandfather’s.” To hear that made Weiss proud.

They spoke cold and calm, a mutual respect and understanding they had developed over years of business-like interaction, Weiss coming in hurt and Oobleck patching her up, the latter never feeling the need to nag or pester the former about being ‘careful’, a notion he understood had no place in passing mention to a person whose job it was to hunt monsters.

Done with stitching, he stripped the near motionless girl down to nothing, searching her body for a timeline of events. As he did so, Weiss gazed on at the pained expression lingering on the girl’s face, still clearly feeling the silvered wound inflicted upon her. A sigh.

“It seems she was clawed along her neck, just a couple weeks ago, then as her werewolf form began to manifest, she accidentally scarred the inside of her palm with her elongated nails. Both of those are already scarred over, so her natural healing is in effect. If I were to guess, this gash on her cheek and the slice on the bridge of her nose was your silver, correct?”

“Aye.”

“Well that should heal as we get away from the full moon.”

Jaune burst into the room with two kettles of water, gasping for air. He had clearly run both ways at full steam. “Where do you want them?”

“Give them to me.”

Jaune noticed the girl was naked and averted his eyes to the floor, stomping forward to hand the water to the Doctor. His elbow bumped Weiss in the back as he passed, a pain stricken face replacing her previous stoic form.

“Thank you boy, you may leave.”

“You alright Weiss?” the knight asked as he turned to leave, Weiss’s expression not escaping his attention.

“Just go,” she wheezed.

Accepting her order, he left the room again, a hint of sadness in his step. The heiress slowly waddled, step by step, to one of the open beds, then lowered herself as gently as she could onto her front. She let out a long groan, exaggerated but even more so cathartic.

“Ah, so you were had,” mused the doctor, now using a washcloth with the warm water to clean his patient. “What is the damage?”

“I think she cracked the ribs on my back.”

“The ribs in your front and back are the same ribs my Heir.”

“I was not aware I had asked for your commentary on the matter.” She rocked her head against the bed to shift her hat down some more, hiding the grin on her face. Oobleck didn't bother hiding his.

He finished his work on the werewolf, mentioning something about her recovery that Weiss simply didn't hear as her mind went somewhere else, her eyelids like lead. She only came to attention when the doctor pulled off her hat and unclasped her red scarf, muttering something about wetting the bed.  
“I do not wet the bed,” mumbled Weiss, mildly offended.

“I said you got all the beds wet, your clothes are soaked.” He threw the hat to the base of the bed, his attempt at brushing it off fruitless.

“Oh...” she started drifting off.

“You need to sit up so I can take your coat off.”

“Hmmmm...” she thought about it, falling asleep for a second until Oobleck loudly cleared his throat. “Oh, uhm, the coat is ruined, just cut it off.” She didn't want to bend or move her shoulders at all.

He made an annoyed gesture as he pulled out a kit from a bedside drawer, brandishing a pair of scissors just beginning to rust. “I'm sure someone less fortunate than the crown princess would've appreciated a fairly expensive leather coat that just got a little stained, but sure,” he started cutting the back open on the coat, starting at the neck, “sure, let's cut up some money, what do I know about fiscal responsibility.”

Having no further need of the scissors, he ripped the backs open on the under shirts she wore, each wet article of clothing sticking to her skin as such things were inclined to do. Eventually he was looking at her bare back, his questions of her injury answered as a cluster of bruises showed themselves for the whole world to see. A finger grazed one of the purple and green spots, the owner waking up suddenly and crying out. “Careful!” she warned.  
“Well Heir, I simply touched it. I will have to touch it a fair bit more. I'm sorry about this...”

“Shiiiiiiiiit—”

“Grit your teeth,” he pressed his thumb into one of the bruises, Weiss biting the sheets and muffling her screams, him pressing harder until she passed out.

Elsewhere, Jaune sat in a comfy padded chair in front of a fireplace, the guest room decorated in odd trinkets and almost valuables meant to entertain a visitor’s imagination. As it was, he poured red wine into the skull of a canary goat and drank from it. The skull was fake of course, carved from wood then dyed to look authentic, and the animal nothing but fiction, but it did its job of arousing the attention of less savvy folk.

Sitting beside him was a woman, short and stout, dirty and covered in ash. She had a large dark steel revolver engraved and inlaid with silver filigree, the casing of the handle opened upon her lap as she filed away at the trigger group, smoothing down a troublesome spot. The ginger haired girl reassembled the gun and thumbed back the hammer, a pull of the trigger and a crisp click putting an accomplished smile on her face. “Done! Now I just have to get it to Weiss before she goes out on her hunt.”

Jaune, leaning his brow against his wine-holding hand, revealed the truth. “Nora, Weiss came back from her hunt an hour ago.”

Terror filled her visage. “I’m going to lose boozing privileges…”

“It is possible.”

-End Chapter 2-


	3. Chapter 3

Fever dreams upon fever dreams, nightmares of hunting and rain, memories of sin and pain. The girl with tainted blood awoke in a cold sweat, rays of sunlight beating her face and cooking her body under the sheets. A simple look at the mansion room brought her to a panic, the girl not used to waking up in places she had no memory of falling asleep in the first place. In a rush she threw off the soft quilts and jumped from the bed, finding herself dressed in a tattered nightgown and her feet wrapped in bandaging.  

Gunning for the door, her anxiety only got worse when the door proved itself to be locked from the outside. Taking fearful steps backward, she spun around and searched the room, trying to find if there was some other way out besides the four panel window glass fixture in the wall. She checked under the bed, flipped the chairs, searched the bedside table drawers, but found nothing. Trapped and suddenly aware of her hunger, she submitted to the situation and sat upon the bed, her thoughts and memories in a stupor.

How did she get here? No, what about before that, what exactly was she doing out in the rain.

Why did she recall a piercing pain? There was a vivid memory of the taste of iron. Or was it meat?

There was terror, fur, a full moon. Was there a beast? Did she get attacked, was she saved?

As she put her hand to her heart in her dismay, an ache below her ribcage came to her attention. Her hand slid downwards to a prominent lump. She scrunched her face. Confusion. She looked down her gown. Stitches pulling the skin of a square hole together. Not only that, in her looking down she noticed scars along her collar bone reaching up and around her neck on the right. Then there was the bandaging wrapping her cheek and the bridge of her nose.

The door rattled as a key was worked into an old lock, the girl freezing in place on the bed. The brass handle shook and turned as the hinges creaked, the door opening at a brisk pace. Weiss stepped through the entryway, tray of food in hand, not noticing the girl’s awakening until she was within arms reach.

The heiress was no longer in her hunting kit, instead donning brown pinstripe pants with tall brown boots, a casual, poofy armed button up white shirt, and an olive green vest set with gold filigree, her favorite style. As much as it clashed however, she kept her beaten white tricorn with the frizzled feathers on either side.

“Oh!” the white haired figure exclaimed, “you’re awake.”

“Where am I? Who are you?” the girl said in turn.

“Here,” Weiss handed the tray of food to her prisoner, then swayed to face the rest of the room. “You don’t like mornings? I can sympathize.” The girl stared intently, patiently, breathlessly as Weiss slowly strolled her way to a flipped chair, kicked it upright with a semi impressive display of foot control, then kicked it closer to the bed. Strolling nonchalantly back over, Weiss plopped herself down into the chair. She scooted back just a little to get out of the overbearing rays of sun that was likely to burn her pale skin. “You are in Castle Vale, or the Schnee Mansion, whichever you prefer to call it. I am Weiss of House Schnee.”

Without thinking, the girl mumbled, “Weiss Schnee, you’re shorter than I would’ve thought…”

Closing her eyes, Weiss took a moment to chew her tongue, continuing, “The question is, who are you?”

The girl carefully watched Weiss’s foot reach out and kick the door shut, and noticed in her peripheral how she simultaneously removed her feathered tricorn and laid it on her lap. The girl did not notice how Weiss had slipped her revolver from behind her waist and tucked it under her hat, the hammer drawn back and sights lined up on the girl’s center mass.

“My name is Ruby.” Her voice was a little higher than Weiss expected, teetering on crisp and scratchy at the same time.

“Ruby. Hmm.” Weiss reached up with her non-gun hand and pulled left and right on her white shirt collar, craning her neck. She wasn’t nervous but the room was a little stuffy. “Do you perchance have a house name?”

“Xiao Long.” Ruby maintained a rigid stare on Weiss, a stare the princess returned with confidence.

“You’re a ‘Xiao Long’?” Weiss tilted her head.

“My mother was Celtic.”

“And your father?”

“Wasn’t.”

Weiss smiled, then shook her head. She looked back to the girl.

“You are from the east then? I thought you looked a little off…” she explained casually, not reacting to a little twinge in Ruby’s face. “No, you seem mostly western. Tell me, where exactly was your father from?”

“China.”

“What was your mothers name?”

“Rose, and her mother was named Summer.”

“Hmm. Well Ruby, daughter of Rose, how old are you?”

Ruby gripped the sheets by her side tightly, suddenly remembering she had no idea what she was doing there still. “Seventeen. Why am I here!?” her voice shook.

Leaning forward onto her knees, the princess squinted hard at the other. “What do you remember exactly?”

Ruby spilled her guts on her feverish snippets of recollections, saying how she remembered the feelings of many wildly different events, and sensations, but couldn’t piece together or make sense of it all. She began rambling when Weiss held up a commanding finger denoting silence. Silence is what she got, Ruby lowering her head.

The princess leaned back. She weighed her options, considered the implications of Ruby’s account, pondered the consequences of her ambitions and figured possible solutions to them should it come to that. She knew she needed to tread carefully, for if she played her cards wrong, this opportunity might just slip through her fingers.

“You were slashed by a werewolf, I believe the night before the full moon based on your reaction. The night of, you went out and hunted a farm hand, consumed their flesh—”

The brunette recoiled in horror, grey eyes dilating in an influx of emotions, mind unable to keep up.

“Yes,” Weiss pointed at the girl, “you did that, and that’s why I took the job to hunt you down. You followed the scent of carnage all the way to my incense where I defeated you.”

“I couldn’t have killed someone…” Ruby echoed.

“We still have the body if you wish to see, I am not lying to you.”

“No, I don’t… I don’t think I could bear to see it…” Falling over, Ruby covered her eyes with her arm, feeling faint. Tears welled up in her eyes. “I’m going to burn in hell, I have 

sinned.” Tossing about, she took to her knees and started praying at the window, Weiss noticing a brief moment where Ruby reached for what must’ve been a cross at her neck only to realize nothing was there. Weiss smiled wide, then wiped the grin from her face, appearing somber.

“Here,” she extracted a silver cross from under her shirt and unfastened it, dropping it link by link into Ruby’s extended hand. “Keep it. Pray. Atone. But you can never take back what you did under the watch of God.”

Ruby looked up to Weiss’s sympathetic eyes. The tears that welled started streaming down, falling from her face and staining the bed. She clenched the cross so her knuckles went white, prayers distorted by the sobs she choked on. Weiss rolled her eyes.

“You’re a true believer, you must really fear his wrath.”

“I murdered an innocent!” Ruby screamed, shocking Weiss just a little. Her finger stroked the trigger under her hat.

“Well,” the heiress rocked her head side to side, “a farmhand.”

“What does a farmhand have to hide!? Just some person, I killed a person who no doubt lead a quiet life! They did their work, they kept out of trouble, and had no way of saving themselves… even worse, it could’ve been my sister…” She covered her upper face as though to hide her shame, to not see the world would mean the world couldn’t see her. Through gritted teeth she kept sobbing.

Weiss felt a pang of guilt in her chest. She frowned. She needed to find something she could use as motivation to convince this stranger to fight monsters, to utilize her potential gifts, but the heiress had suspected that motivation would’ve been wealth. Instead she found that this stranger was pure of heart, felt for other people, had empathy, something she did her best to avoid normally. Nonetheless, she could use this.

For the better part of half an hour, Weiss formulated her offer while the other vented her guilt through tears. Finally she spoke and leaned back. “Why do you think you’re here?”

Ruby sniffled. “What do you mean?”

A sigh. “What do you think I mean?” she urged, shaking her head in an ambiguous display of either annoyance or just mechanical motion.

“Well… I think you mean why am I here, as in, you’re Weiss the Huntsmen, from what I understand… you should’ve already killed me…” Her stare fell to her hands, the notion of her own mortality just dawning on her.

Weiss took notice, however desired the opposite. “No, that was not what I meant.” She crossed her legs. “Each of us are put on this earth to prove ourselves and do right before we pass on. Trials and tribulations are God’s gifts that allow us to do our best by him. Look at me.”  The brunette’s eyes leveled back on the noble. “Your taint is weak, a gift if you wil,l to do much more than had none of this happened.”

“Taint? Weak?”

Uncrossing her legs, she leaned back forward and reached out, thin fingers grabbing the side of Ruby’s face, cold fingers offering a sobering solace. “Help me daughter of Rose. I can help you control yourself during the full moons, and your wolfblood will prove invaluable in hunting the monsters that go bump in the night. We, together, can…” Weiss considered her words, “we can purify the world of some of its evils.” She pulled back. “Or, if you wish, I can help you control your urges, and you can go back home, and live a quiet life, do good in the typical fashions, if you so choose.”

Ruby hesitated. There was a disconnect in what Weiss was saying. A contradiction. Was this really a ‘gift from God’ as Weiss put it, and didn’t he say earlier that she couldn’t atone? How could the death of an innocent be intentional? Ruby never heard of other werewolves having a choice, was it right to hunt them? Didn’t Weiss change his tune just a bit? Did he just change his mind? If so, why was she spared if he didn’t plan this? Her mind raced with suspicions.

But she wasn’t used to such thoughts. The thought of atonement, of doing good had taken root however, a beacon of light in the dark, and it flashed so brightly that before she knew it, she couldn’t see anything except what she wanted to see. Her idealism took the helm.

“I’ll do it!” she announced, mustering her strongest look to offer Weiss. 

The heiress clapped her hands in sudden excitement. “Excellent!” She stood up, brushing her lap and fixing her pants as a disguise to holster her gun while she elaborated, “I’ll set up the arrangements. You work on your farm, yes?” Ruby nodded. “I’ll send a trustworthy laborer to take your place. You can eat your breakfast and then I’ll have the tailor dress you, and my squire will show you around.”

“Can I see my sister too? I want her to know I’m safe…”

“Of course!” Patting the girl on the shoulder, Weiss took to the door, ready to go. “Does your farm have a name?”

“Patch.”

Weiss stopped in place, her face twisted with the simple question ‘why’. “A farm named Patch. Hmm. I’ll send someone right away.”

Ruby perked up, calling out before Weiss opened the door. “Prince?”

Weiss chuckled quietly to herself. She turned to face Ruby once more. “Yes?”

“Thank you.” Weiss could barely hear her, but the impact of the words, the look of the earnest girl’s passion stricken face, the fire in her grey eyes, it all caused a flash of heat across her face. She suddenly felt the need to sweat.

“Of course.” 

She closed the door. The hallway was far cooler than the room, a fact Weiss could appreciate. Jaune was waiting on the other side of the door. Waiving a hand, she gestured for him to follow her as she started a fast stride. “She will be joining us it seems.” He looked at her sincere smile for longer than he probably should have.

“Would you really let her go home if she refused?” Jaune had his own chuckle, the thought of his consistently mean liege growing a soft spot somehow amusing. Heir Weiss brought down to human by some farm girl.

Her smile maintained as she divulged cooly, “Of course. I would give her the carriage ride there, then in the night, I would return and slit her throat.” It was then that Jaune experienced his own brand of terror.

 

-End Chapter 3-

 


	4. Chapter 4

“It’s in my eyes!” cried Ruby.

“Stop rubbing it in!” scolded Coco, the dazzling tailor. She wrestled Ruby’s hands away to wash away the soap with clean water. “You can’t expect me to believe you’ve never handled soap before darling!”

“Isn’t water good enough?” she countered through tightly squeezed eyelids. “Speaking of which, this hot water is nice.”

“Look up real quick.” Coco dropped her scrub and reached over to the side of the bath.

“Why?”

Ruby let out a shriek as Coco poured a bucket of cold water onto her face.

A short bit later, out of the bath, the tailor had the farmgirl in a bathrobe and in a chair in front of the dressing room vanity mirror. “Ow, ow, ow, ow…” repeated Ruby as Coco brushed her previously shaggy hair.

“So many knots darling, don’t tell me you don’t know how to use a brush either?”

“My sister uses ‘em,” she craned her head in a futile attempt to ease the pain, “I never needed one!”

“Well that’s where you’re wrong honey, you needed them before this if you didn’t want this to hurt,” Coco pointed out.

Before she knew what was happening, Coco was brushing her teeth for her.

“Ish fish neshmashary?”

“Sorry darling, I can’t understand you, your bad breath is too loud.” Ruby finally understood that Coco was enjoying herself. The jubilant grin might’ve been the item to tip her off.

“Are you grinding my fingers!?” Ruby drew away her hands as though she had touched a hot stove.

The tailor waved her file with a natural grace. “I’m trimming your man nails darling. Trust me, we’re almost done, you’re already looking great.”

“Re- really?” she asked, looking up to the gorgeous woman.

“A good tailor doesn’t lie to her customer, only the competition.”

A few moments later, they stood in front of the room’s center dressing mirror, the dresser tenderly holding the shoulders of the dressee. Ruby had basic underwear and garter belts on, her hair in a towel. Lacking the regular amount of clothing she was used to, she shook a little in anxiety over this relative stranger examining her body like it was fine art. Of course Ruby wouldn’t actually know if she was looking at art or a canvas used to clean brushes, but the point remained.

Coco pulled a tape from her pocket and wrapped it around Ruby every which way, moving her arms and getting in places that made the girl blush. As she measured, she thought out loud so her ‘customer’ could follow along, “5 foot 9 inches is a little on the tall side and your skin is pretty smooth, you have been well fed. Still very thin though, I don’t have too much for ladies in your height and width, but I am a tailor, so we’re covered…” she laughed to herself, her growing excitement rubbing off on Ruby.

“So what are you going to dress me in?” She was allowed to lower her arms.

“Hmmm…” Coco thought. “Oh,” she stretched the ‘o’ for several seconds, inspiration striking her. “Ruby—”

“Yes?”

“No, Ruby, daughter of Rose… it’s too easy sometimes.”

After some corset tying, some tussling with fabrics and stitching clothes, the farmgirl was delighted by her reflection. Though the towel and scars kept the image from crossing to something out of a dream, she still couldn’t believe the item she was wearing. The dress, as a whole, was a glossy red, the bottom a layered skirt that looked like the inside of a rose on one side, a patterned corset breaking up her middle, and the neck and shoulders of the piece was black rose patterned lace. To go with the ensemble was a black, elbow length opera glove for her right arm, and a scarlett georgette scarf that hung like a fabric necklace down below her collarbone, hiding the scarred part of her neck. 

“I am good if I do say so myself,” gloated Coco, holding Ruby’s shoulders again.

Ruby reached up and touched the woman’s well groomed hands affectionately. “I feel like a princess, it’s like I’m in a fairytale. Thank you.”

“Ha,” she gave a hearty laugh, “we’re not done yet sweety.” In front of the vanity mirror again, the tailor removed the towel and worked on Ruby’s hair, not letting the girl see the progress as she went. Once done with that, she moved on to makeup. Ruby could feel little brushes feather the majority of her face, a notable focus was spent on masking the cut across the bridge of her nose and the maimed flesh of her right cheek. The last thing was her eyelashes and lipstick. “Done. You can open.”

Ruby couldn’t believe her eyes. 

The mirror showed a princess, not the farmgirl she knew herself to be.

Most of her hair was pulled back into a bun in back that flared out in a fascinating combination of order and chaos, like the tail of a crow or raven, and in front was her bangs. On her left, they were short and neat, but on the right, where her cheek wound was, the bangs reached down as they curved in to her pink lips, drawing the eyes away from the injury. Coco waited on Ruby’s reaction.

“As a child, I would every now and again see noblewomen walk in the market. I would see the makeup on their faces, and I would get scared. They looked like harlequins, and I could never understand the appeal. I asked my father, ‘why? Why would someone ruin their looks like that?’ He never had an answer, he didn’t use it. The way you do it, I can barely tell I’m wearing it… It’s like, it’s as though this is the pinnacle of what I could look like. I understand why people use makeup now. You are a master of your craft.” Ruby sniffled with a smile.

Coco reciprocated, hugging the girl from behind. “Thank you miss. Anytime.”

“Really?” Ruby laughed, wiping her nose.

“Oh don’t cry now honey, you’ll ruin your lashes. But within reason, yes, I enjoyed working on you, you’re much prettier than most of the sow that I have to deal with.”

The maiden laughed out loud, grinning wide to the dresser’s frankness.

“Nicer too, and fun!” She pulled away, adjusting the clothes to see if she could improve it in the future at all. “Just keep brushing your hair and we’ll be sterling.”

Several quick raps on the door announced the presence of visitors. “Are you done in there yet?” called Weiss.

Coco beamed at Ruby. “Let’s show them. Come in!”

Jaune held open the door as Weiss strode in. Ruby stood to greet them, Coco just behind her. Both of them smiled proudly to the two visitors. “Well then,” Weiss remarked quietly.

The knight grasped at his chest, a pain throbbing right around where his heart should’ve been. “Excuse me.” He had to rip his eyes off of the maiden and almost ran out of the room.

Coco and Ruby giggled to each other, his reaction a high praise to the both of them. Even Weiss snickered, though she attempted to hide it behind her hand as she pretended to scratch her nose. “Careful Jaune,” she shouted loud enough for him to hear from the hallway, “I think you may have left your jaw somewhere in here.” She focused on the two in front of her. “Coco, you outdid yourself this time, you really did.”

“Thank you Heir.”

“Splendid artsmanship.”

“You flatter me.”

“Yes, now I ask, is she going to a ball? A picnic perhaps? A brothel?” Weiss kept smiling.

Coco kept smiling too. “Sorry?” Ruby stopped smiling.

“I needed you to dress her in a war kit, hunter’s garb, rain gear, whatever you prefer to call it, she’s going to be ripping the gullets from beasts as they try to eviscerate her, not dipping crackers in fairy dust wine.”

The smile never left the tailor’s face. Instead, her eye twitched as something deep inside her being snapped into a million pieces.

“Start over. She has split ends in her hair anyways, cut it short. Take that make-up off, she needs to look strong, not like she’s going to seduce a vampire.” Weiss started leaving, but not without making sure she had the last word. “And don’t keep the red scarf. If we had matching red scarves, that would just be tacky.”

As the door closed, Coco reached after the heiress, hands clenching like a mugger strangling a alleyway victim. Biting her hand, she screamed into it for a long moment before looking to Ruby. “A brothel! You can’t say that to a lady!”

Shocked was she to see Ruby silently giggling to herself. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

Coco relaxed. “Well, most ladies don’t take kindly to such comments.”

“This was more than I ever hoped for. I can only ask that you keep this dress around for maybe a later day.”

“Of course. You will have your night to shine darling.”

She stroked her new bangs. “I see where Weiss is coming from though, I won’t be dressing up, I have dangerous work to do.”

“But every lady must be presentable! It’s almost the law I tell you!”

“Well that’s alright. I’m not a lady,” Ruby stated simply.

Coco started removing the dress, starting with the corset. “Oh but you will be.”

“What do you mean?”

“Hunters are at the same station as knights and nobles. Yes, you will start out as Weiss’s apprentice, learn the ropes of the trade, learn to be a werewolf that hunts beasts—”

The farmgirl stiffened. “You know?”

Coco chuckled. “Of course I know. Heir Schnee wouldn’t have the person dressing a person with werewolf scars not know that they were a werewolf. Weiss told me ahead of time and had me swear secrecy. So… don’t worry. Your secret is safe.”

“Secret…” it sounded weird to her ears. She never had a secret before, never dressed so elegantly, never been important, never stunned a man; today was a day of many firsts for her.

Stripped down, she was sat down at the vanity mirror again, the tailor picking up one of her pairs of scissors. With reluctance, she started chopping away Ruby’s black brown locks. “Anyhow, once you have proven yourself to be able of hunting by yourself, you will be dubbed as a hunter. You will be paid per hunt, you will have the right to walk around wherever you wish, go to the balls, you will earn a family name, the list goes on. You’ll outrank me by a country mile.”

She sighed. “But I’ll be able to see you still, right?”

The tailor smirked with a friendly sway of her body. “Anytime sweety, my offer still stands. Besides, you have to see me again. I still have your dress.”

Jaune waited in the hallway for a while more, eventually giving up on sitting comfortably and took to sleeping across several mismatched chairs he collected from other rooms. The door finally opened and Ruby stepped out. Dark gray leather everything. A mantle that wrapped her shoulder almost all the way around except for just over her right arm to allow movement. A long coat that had split leg skirts reaching just above her tall boots and belts around the waist to cinch the excess of clothing. Instead of a standard collar, the collar was buttoned up to act as a sock around the lower half of her face, though could be undone to breathe normally. Jaune recognized some of Coco’s style in the red linen peeking out from under the top mantle, clearly just there for a splash of color. Ruby took the tricorn in her hand and fastened it upon her short-haired head.

“A little different I see,” he commented. He was disappointed by the change, but knew it had to be done. He held out his hand. “Jaune of house Arc. This is our first proper meeting.”

She stared at his hand. “Is your hand okay?”

He looked at her.

She looked at him.

“Oh.” She held out her gloved hand, of which he took and bowed to kiss. She blushed, but none could see under her collar mask. “Ruby, daughter of Rose.”

“I am… Weiss’s squire,” he said with much pain. “I am to show you around.”

Ruby looked down the hallway one way then the other. “I’m honored.”

In a dark laboratory, a golden clock ticked at half pace, slow and methodical. Weiss leaned against the messy desk before her. “Will it keep her weakened?”

An older man of silver hair, black blazer and green tie, slid a bottle of what looked like water across the sole, clear space over to Weiss. “Trace silver, otherwise water. I’m starting small so she shouldn’t feel it. If she starts acting up, I’ll increase the dosage.”

“Thank you Ozpin. I trust you’ll check up on her yourself?”

“Oh I wouldn’t miss this for anything, miss Schnee.”

-End Chapter 4-

  
  



	5. Chapter 5

In a guest room adorned in taxidermied beasts, Weiss stared miserably into the embers of the fireplace, Sir Port sitting aside her as he took drink after drink of his sparkling wine while merrily recounting his exploits. “...And that’s when I rammed me axe right into the beastie’s mouth and said,” he flung his finger forward, pretending to talk to something in front of him while brandishing a crazed look in his eye, “‘This what ya get daemon spawn’ then I kicked ‘em down and cleaved him down from one massive to two mighty bits! Ha ha!”

“Hmm.” Weiss wasn’t raised to be rude, but she wasn’t raised to be polite either.

“After that, ‘yer grandfather pulled ‘yer father by the collar and said, ‘If you refuse to listen to either of us again Jacques, it won’t be a wolf getting ripped in two!’ Aha, ‘yer father pissed himself on the ride back home, I’ll never forget his face.” The old man laughed, his large belly bouncing in his jolly motions.

“I would’ve like to have seen that,” admitted Weiss, finger thumbing the neck of the wine bottle she sat in her lap, “but my father commands you to stop telling your tales.” Her stare lingered on the fire.

“Well I confess, Jacques wasn’t the most flattering individual while me and Nicholas were in our huntsmen prime, but ‘command’ is a bit serious of a word for something like that, don’t you think?” he laughed, a bit of his mirth curbed.

She bobbed her head to the side. “What I think doesn’t matter. My father is very serious about it.”

A chuckle traced with a hint of concern. Port looked down to his sparkling wine that Weiss brought him, but had drank none of herself. “Haha, don’t tell me now that Jacques had me poisoned?”

“No poison.”

A sigh of relief. “You had me worried there Wei—”

“Venom,” she added calmly, quietly.

Port gave a great bellow of laughter. “Either you or Jacques have a bloody fantastic sense of humor, Venom! That’s what always confuses the simpler people, Venom can be ingested, it’s only if the darn thing gets in your blood that it’s really dangerous.”

“Do you like the wine?”

He swirled the wine glass in his hand, enjoying the sparkle in it. “Yes I do actually, I was wondering what that kick was that I was tasting, and the sparkling feature is quite lovely.”

“That’s crushed glass.”

Port’s eyes went wide. His head turned violently to look at Weiss.

“If you’re lucky, it’ll pass through. If you’re not, the glass will perforate your insides and give the venom a way into your bloodstream. That is, of course, if the cuts inside you don’t do something nasty like spill stomach acid and melt you from within.” She stood up steadily.

“Why?” was all the old man could muster to say, visage red with fury, betrayal, and fear for his own life.

The heiress walked to the door, steps light and graceful, like she wasn’t there. “My father does not want his reputation to be further degraded. Dead men tell no tales, but if you survive, consider it a second chance at life.” Looking over her shoulder, her glare pierced right through the noble’s bushy eyebrows, down to his core. In a whisper, she ordered, “I would not repeat my mistakes, old man.”

Down the hall in one of the mansion’s many food prep rooms, this one an area for light snacking and drinking while looking out the window to the garden, Jaune leaned against the wall as he chatted with the asian butler dressed in black. Ren held a silver platter at chest height and perfectly level, as a good butler does. “Sometimes I uh…” the knight spoke, one arm held across his belly to support the other elbow, his hand twirling, “sometimes I like to flick wine on my bread.” The two middle fingers of his twirling hand flicked against his thumb a couple times. “I like my bread soggy on the top. Gives it flavor.”

Ren pursed his lips and looked askance. A moment passed as he looked about the pale blue decorated room. A slim smile. “I do not know how to respond to that, sir.”

Jaune chuckled. “What, you don’t like grape juice in your bread Ren? It’s a delicacy.”

The butler chuckled quietly too. “I see sir, you jest. You had me there for a moment.” A nod spoke to his lighthearted humility at falling for the man’s sarcasm. Ren was not one to be another’s fool under normal circumstances

“Yes, unfortunately I can’t claim ownership of the jest. I was speaking to Sir Efraim whe—”

The relative peace and quiet of the room was shattered abruptly with the door bursting open and several teacups on the doorside shelf wobbling off and breaking on the floor. Weiss stormed in, wine bottle still in hand, of which she slammed down on Ren’s platter, the bottom of the bottle exploding in every direction. Glass chock full of wine spilled around the plate onto Ren’s arm and shoes. Rage still strong in Weiss’s face, she grabbed the crookedly sitting bottleneck again and threw it against the wall, Jaune and Ren raising a hand to their face to shield against the glass spraying everywhere.

From across the room, the heiress pointed at the butler’s face, “Tell my father that his pride remains chaste!” she yelled through gritted teeth.

His mask of stoicism held strong. “Lord Jacques will likely not appreciate the task being referred to as thus.”

Her clothes rustled as she strutted forward, stepping in close into Ren’s personal space as she grabbed him by the collar. She whispered seething words inches from his face, “Tell my father… my duty is complete.” Weiss let go as much as she pushed the taller fellow away, turning tail and storming back out of the room.

The knight, still leaning against the wall, threw up his hands in surrender and raised his brows, Ren shrugging in response. With their nonverbal conversation over, Jaune followed Weiss out of the room while the butler brushed glass particles off his lapel.

Catching up to the heiress, the knight took his regular place just behind and to the right of his master, matching his footsteps to her’s for that professional echo expected from royal carpet walks and military marches. “I’m not sure how to feel about the prospect of Sir Port no longer being one among the living. I’m going to miss his boastful tales.”

Weiss took a deep breath. Then she took another. She still sounded angry. “According to our assassination records, no one has been killed by powdered glass. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but our Sir Port should be fine.”

“So it was just a scare tactic?”

“Yes.”

“Why are you so angry Weiss? Is it because of something else or…” he lowered his voice as he kept up with her furious stride, “Is it just because of your father?”

The girl grabbed her own wrist, covering the paler underside while clenching her free hand into a fist. “Keep to yerself Sir Arc.”

“Hmm. It’s been a week since I last saw you cover your wrists.”

Midstep, Weiss pivoted and punched the young man in the gut, then went on her way again. Jaune, not a stranger to her occasional outbursts, flexed his stomach and took her blow well enough, stumbling backwards only a little and coughing mildly. He took his spot behind her once more, this time in silence.

Ruby was waiting patiently in the empty training hall, a large room with lanes meant for sparring sketched into the bouncy wood floor, racks of different shapes and sizes of weapons lining the walls, and a wall of windows facing the rising sun in the east, a checkered pattern of shadows and orange light coloring the floor. She sat in the middle, donned in her leather sans her hat, when the doors at the south end opened up, Weiss with Jaune in tow. The white haired hunter lobbed an apple at Ruby without warning, the latter catching it in her left hand.

“So you're left handed?” asked Weiss.

“No,” corrected Ruby, standing up and tossing the apple to the other hand, “I’m dexter, not sinister.” She had a self satisfied grin.

“While I’m impressed with both the catch and the understanding of dexter and sinister, those terms are exclusive to heraldry, and your attempt to impress me pedantically fails in it’s erroneous exploitation of erudite lexicon,” stated Weiss in a matter of fact way.

Jaune and Ruby stared blankly at the fancy word-using hunter. It was Weiss’s turn to be self satisfied.

“Ruby, daughter of Rose, try squeezing that apple there in your hand.” She walked to the wall with wooden swords.

“Yes my Lord.” Not expecting much, the wolf girl firmly grasped the fruit in her right hand and squeezed, her fingers sinking somewhat into the firm apple much to her surprise.

She grabbed two wooden swords, one gladius, or rather a short sword, and a longsword. “Did you manage to dent it at all?” she called out to her apprentice. 

A little bewildered, she stuttered in her call back across the room, “Uh-uhm- uh, yes, a little more than dent even.”

“Good.” Weiss approached the center, a spring in her step and not at all phased by the result. “You shouldn’t be monstrously strong at the moment but you should have a clear edge. Here.” She handed the taller girl a flask of water and the short sword, then began to pull on her gloves. “Drink.”

Complying, Ruby drank a fourth of the bottle and slipped it into one of her many pouches. Following lead, she donned her own gloves and gripped the sword in her right hand and awkwardly held the apple in her left. “What do you want with the apple?”

“Toss it to Sir Arc, make him useful for once.” 

Ruby took a step forward with a halfhearted pitch and launched the apple in a high arc, no pun intended, to the knight, who caught it in both hands with a little struggle. Noticing that Weiss was center in the lane and holding out her sword horizontally, Ruby moved herself to match stance and position, but mostly gawked at the play sword.

“Hold out your sword like this,” ordered the teacher.

“Alright.” Ruby did as instructed.

Whipping around the wooden longsword, Weiss smacked the tip of the shortsword and knocked it wholesale out of Ruby’s hands. “You may be strong now, but physics still apply Daughter of Rose. The part of the blade nearer to the hilt is called the ‘strong’ of the blade, while the part farther from is called the ‘weak.’ Pick up your weapon. For every pivot point, there is a lever arm, and the longer the lever arm, or the farther from the pivot point you apply force, the more torque there will be in a multiplicative fashion.” Weiss studied the somewhat understanding and somewhat confused face of the girl. “Did you understand anything of what I just said?”

“Uhmm… are you speaking of how a longer pry bar can lift more easily than a short one? Granted it doesn’t break in the process of course…”

“Exactly, more or less. I’m going to strike you, and I want you to block first with your tip, then with the strong near your hilt.”

Bringing her right hand to grip her longsword with her left dominant hand, Weiss took two steps forward, each step a sideways swipe from just far enough away that if Ruby didn’t block properly, she would still be out of range. Ruby did as instructed, the first blow almost knocking the weapon from her hand while the second simply imparted shock to her wrist.

“Good. Now lets see you defend…” Weiss, without warning, began assailing the other girl with a series of increasingly powerful strikes, the stepping distance increasing with the swing arc, waist twist, and arm speed. At first Ruby only had to step back and keep the short sword in place to block, albeit with a mild look of first time experience panic creeping in her expression, but soon with each blow cracking loudly against her increasingly underweighted sword, she had to strike back at the swings to keep them from carrying through and overpowering her. As she struck back harder, Weiss’s sword seemed to bounce off more and lead easier and easier into new angles of cuts.

Through the loud cracks of wood in the echoing training hall, Weiss continued in her lesson, breath gaining raggedness. “Under the pretense of the correct type of collision, the harder you strike back, the harder my sword will bounce. The stronger you are on the other hand, the less you will bounce back. We will start with the gladius, you will learn to appreciate a lighter weapon with less reach and priority in power before I promote you up eventually to a zweihander…” Reaching the pinnacle of her might in blows, Weiss broke Ruby’s prop in two, one half flying across the room while the other fell to their feet, the trainee falling onto her derriere. Ruby looked up to the hunter, longsword tip at her nose, eyes wide and breath heavy. Weiss lowered her sword. “Again.”

Jaune pulled up a chair and crossed his legs. He ogled the deformed apple, eventually eating it as time passed. Hours dragged on, the shadows crawled across the floor to the windows, and Weiss and Ruby took short breaks every ten minutes, the teacher swigging away at good wine while Ruby polished her canteens of water.

Weiss had Ruby switch between defending, attacking, both, coached basic parries, and forced her to use proper footwork. “Your feet should never cross unless you are covering more than a half dozen feet at a time!” Weiss barked as she sidestepped around Ruby, causing her crossed feet to trip her up. “At first it’ll be harder than what you would naturally do, granted, but with time you will find yourself more balanced.”

“Change your angles up, you’re getting predictable,” commented Weiss as she blocked yet another left cut followed by a right cut, stopping Ruby before she could even start the right cut by slapping the sword out of her hand. “Only repeat an exact action if you intend to act on the counter action of your opponent.”

Ruby’s seventh shortsword broke. “Striking the flat of a blade is liable to break the blade, never let your opponent strike your flat. Your edge will ruin faster but you will have a sword longer.”

“Yes sir!” Ruby nodded back.

Weiss purposely locked blades with Ruby, Ruby barely managing to overpower Weiss and throw Weiss’s tip low to a harmless space. Weiss elbowed Ruby in the gut and dropped the girl. “Remember, sword play isn’t just about swords, it’s also punching, grabbing, wrestling, cheap shots, never fall for a attempted blade lock if you’re not ready to forgo attacking with your hands. In that regard, you should actually have an advantage in your strength.”

Ruby nodded as she held her stomach, the wind knocked out of her.

Dozens of dozens of strikes, parries, trips, unexpected fists, bruises and lessons on the fundamentals of combat later, the wolf girl laid exhausted and in pain on the floor, sweat staining her garments. Weiss stood panting, resting lightly against her longsword–turned–crutch, her waterskin of wine empty to her dismay.

“What is your verdict, my lord?” Jaune yawned from by the south doors.

“Excellent reflexes, good utilization of strength, quick learner. But I ask you, Daughter of Rose, what is your opinion on the gladius?”

Catching her breath, Ruby threw the short sword away from her, the prop skidding across the floor to a wall. “I am sorry to confess my lord, I do not have love in my heart for the weapon.” She continued to pant like a dog.

“Yes,” Weiss chuckled, “I too am not a fan, but now you understand a form of baseline, the minimum of a sword if you will. Soon I will move you up to broadswords, but tomorrow, you will do short spears.” A thought occurred to the heiress just then, a glimmer of intrigue flashed in her pale blue eyes. She looked down to her apprentice. “On your farm, what were your chores?”

“Uh, I was in charge of cutting the wheat.”

“How much? How many acres?”

Ruby considered it for a moment. “I cut all of it, several acres worth.”

“With a scythe, correct? Not a sickle?” Weiss raised her brow to show interest.

The girl frowned, though not in sorrow or anger. “Yes. How did you know?”

“A hunch. I’ll keep that in mind for later.”

“Say, when will I get to see my sister?” the black haired girl asked up to her master.

Weiss finally straightened up completely and turned for the south door. “Soon.” She removed her gloves. “Can you read?”

Ruby nodded her head ‘no’ guiltily. “No my lord. I know the characters, but I can’t put them together.”  
A sigh. “Something else to keep in mind I suppose.” Weiss left the room.

The knight walked over to the sprawled out girl. He kneeled by her, the tip of the sword and sheath at his hip clattering against the wood floor as he offered a bread bowl of soup. “Imagine you might be hungry. Care for some stew?”

Confusion. She wiped the sweat from her eyes and looked again at him and the food. Her words came out slurred and unclear. Jaune could tell she asked a question but had no idea what the question was. “What?” he implored.

She cleared her throat. “Where did you get the grub? Did you have it the whole time?”

It was his turn to look confused. “What? Yes, I’ve had this garb the whole time.” He laughed a little, and began wondering if he just had such little presence that this girl couldn’t keep track of his clothes. It was a sullen thought, but he thought it was more than probable.

Reluctantly sitting herself up, all the pooled up sweat traveled at once down the creases of her face and into her neckline. She grunted to the familiar soreness of hardwork and bodily pain. Taking the bread bowl and spoon, a heapful of carrots and meat began its journey through Ruby’s teeth. “Did you have it in a basket by the door or something? I just ask because I just don’t recall seeing it.” Bits of food sprayed as she talked. Jaune was reminded humorously of Nora.

“What? No I uh…” he gestured to his person, then tugged on his sleeve with no real intention in mind, “I’ve been wearing it this whole time, I promise.”

Her jaw hung slack as she stared at him like he was a foreign creature. “You had a bowl of soup in your clothes?”

He recoiled. “What?”

She tilted her head. “What?”

Realization struck him. He stood from his crouch and chortled. “Oh! Grub! Yes, uh, no, a maid brought it just now.”

She found the otherside of the same coin. “Oh you thought—! Garb! Oh, I’m so sorry my lord, sometimes I speak poorly—”

He waved his hand submissively, “No no no, I misheard my lady—”

Ruby shook her hand apologetically, “No no no, I-I- you did nothing wrong my lord—”

They talked over each other in their race to be the one to apologize, neither saying anything particularly coherent, each one changing the story to make themself seem more so like the guilty party until Ruby out into giggles.

Jaune squinted to the side with a unsure smile. “Do I… amuse you?”

She held the back of her hand to her mouth to prevent further food spray. Stifling her giggles, she said, “I apologize my lord, I just…” she waved her hand around her head, “I had this idea of what nobles were like, and there was the hopeful part of me that believed in this fairytale of charming princes and the like, but there was the other part that figured in reality they had to be… mean, the sinial part of me figured flights of fancy were just that.”

The knight looked to the ceiling. He stroked his short beard with two fingers. “Do you mean ‘cynical’?” 

“Yes!” she exclaimed. She would’ve gone a little red in embarrassment were it not for her already being red in the face thanks to the work out. “That’s the word, cynical.”

His eyes fell back down to her. “Are you getting at… are you saying I’m like a charming prince?” Safe to say, he smiled like a fool.

Another spoonful. “No.” She looked passed him innocently and missed the dejected, beaten puppy look he gave. “I was going to say you’re not what I was expecting from a lord. Not mean, not stern, but kind, a little funny,” she giggled, thinking about their awkward exchange a moment ago, “It’s truly wonderful to know I’ll have someone like you around to get along with. I don’t mean harm but… Prince Weiss is… intense.”

“Prince Weiss?” he jeered, brows raising.

“Yes?” His reaction surprised her. She thought that perhaps ‘intense’ did not mean what she thought it meant. Ruby grew annoyed with herself.

“Yes he… he uh, ha, he is intense.” Jaune bobbed his head, itched his neck, and choked down the urge to laugh. Or the urge to run and find Weiss, tell her that she was apparently a man, then explain to Weiss that she would have to find a beautiful princess to wed and have many, many children. Then he had to suppress the image in his mind of Ruby and Weiss attempting to have children. Such thoughts were impure and improper, and he knew he should be ashamed of himself for having lewd thoughts of his lord, but it didn’t stop him from having them.

“Yes my lady, I do believe the next few weeks will also be fairly intense still.” The knight crouched back down to see eye to eye with the eating girl.

“Why the next few weeks? Is something happening during then? After then?”

“Well of course. Training almost every day if I’m correct, then come the next full moon, you’re privy to go on a hunt with… Prince Weiss.”

Ruby ate away at her stew, contemplating the connotations of Jaune’s words. She had to know and learn everything she could, as her new line of work was dangerous enough that any detail might help her in the long run. Not understanding the exact details of crop rotation and chaff removal might result in a handful of bad crops or a bad row, but getting surprised by the abilities of a werewolf for example could result in her not knowing what to do. And with the common sense bestowed upon her, not knowing what to do in the presence of a large, bloodthirsty creature sounds like a quick way to die. Painfully.

“Why the full moon?”

He shuffled in place. “What do you mean?”

“Why is the moon relevant?”

“Because that is often when a beast is overcome with their feral instincts to hunt.”

“That’s what I figured… which is why… how am I supposed to help the Prince when I am liable to be effected the same?”

Jaune paused. He chewed his tongue and cheek. Finally, “Well my lady, we will see exactly how you react. The curse always affects a person in the same mannerisms every time, but each person is affected differently.”

“I don’t follow.”

He looked down at his hand for a moment, then pointed at his fingernails. “Every werewolf I know of has their nails affected somehow by the transformation of the moon, but while some get hooked nails, others get longer claws, while others still get stone-like hardness. Some learn to control their curse and transform at will, others are slave to it and transform for a few days or remain in a wolflike form. Some become like large wolves while others resemble large abominations of fur and teeth. You were almost completely human, but alas, we only saw you the night after the peak of the full moon. Do you remember any… growing pains?”

She lifted a spoonful to her mouth. “Growing pains?”

“Some men have screamed as their body rapidly grew fur and bones broke and shifted, some have transformed over the course of days painlessly. The werewolves that can control their powers as though they’re some sort of druid or the like can go between in a puff of smoke, just like that. Truly magical.”

Lost in his explanation, he missed the growing look of fear on Ruby’s face. “Breaking- broken- shifting bones… I do believe I am… I feel faint.” 

“You should be fine.”

“Should—” Breaking into a cold sweat, Ruby fell over as she briefly passed out.

 

-End Chapter 5-

  
  
  



	6. Chapter 6

“Uncle Qrow!” shouted the hearty blonde farmer girl, “Where are you Uncle Qrow!? It’s morning, wake up will ya!?” Yang almost tripped on her way down the rickety stairs while she forced her comb through her great mane of gold hair, feet getting caught in her unfastened skirt. To be exact, nothing she wore was fastened. The brown bodice that wrapped around her ruffled chemise was unlaced and ready to slip off, the dandelion yellow scarf she used as a belt for her sand colored skirt was missing, and her boots were untied.

“Father! Are you up yet!?” she shouted some more. 

A indistinct groan came from the otherside of the house.

Still a bit groggy, Yang bumped her shoulders into the doorways as she passed through. Almost falling face first as she stepped outside, the farmer stopped fiddling with her hair and picked up a basket for the chicken coop. “Father! You better be ready when the carriage gets here!” The window to her father’s room were thin, and with her volume she was sure that he would be able to distinctly hear her. Dozens of white, black, brown, peppered and speckled and spotted chickens clucked and ran circles around Yang while she collected eggs. One of the roosters outside the coop decided that Yang wasn’t apparently up and awake yet, so it started it’s obnoxious crowing.

Jogging at a excited pace, Yang burst into the kitchen and put the basket of eggs beside the stove top. Checking inside the stove, a few embers from last night still glowing, she shoved in a couple split pieces of firewood, then put a pan on top. With some eggs sitting over the fire, Yang ran to her father’s room and saw the man of dirty blonde hair still laying under his covers. Without mercy, the farmer girl reached under the sheets and pulled her father by the feet out of bed and out tumbling onto the floor.

“Aye aye aye aye!” Taiyang protested loudly. “I’m up! I’m up!” Rolling over, he kicked beneath himself and stumbled to his feet.

Yang was already out the door. “You better be father, it’s not everyday you get to see your own kin working at the castle under the prince!” 

In front of the frying eggs, she laced up her bodice and boots, then found her scarf hanging from the kitchen ceiling. Fetching water from the well, she rinsed her mouth and face with a deep shiver, her father getting his own bucket of water for the same. “Do you think she’ll woo the prince yer think?” he jested.

She scoffed with a shake of her head. “She couldn’t seduce her way out of pack of boys raised in the Vatican.”

They both shared a laugh that creeped into cackle territory. Yang left the eggs to her father while she grabbed a bucket full of feed for the pigs. In the pen, she found Qrow. “Qrow!” she shouted, dumping the feed on him, “Wake up!”

“Quiet down kiddo, it’s too early in the morning for shouting.” In nothing but a long shirt for sleeping, Qrow let the half dozen pigs swarm him and eat off of his muddy body.

“Come on uncle, you need to watch the farm while we go to see Ruby, get up!” she urged him, laughter catching on as she watched the pigs feast off him.

Largely ignoring her, his eyes crept open to the blinding light of morning. He covered his eyes for a minute until they finally adjusted. Looking around groggily, he pulled a dirty flask from the mud and was disappointed to find there was no more booze in it. “Perfect.”

Running upstairs to her room, Yang grabbed her blue and white checkered shawl from her bedpost, then wrapped the warm fabric around her face and neck. Before she went back to the kitchen for breakfast, her body slowed for the first time that morning as she left a lingering gaze at the hammock just above her bed where Ruby used to sleep. As it was, it sagged without weight or swing, a modicum of dust collecting a top it. Her room wasn’t her home while Ruby wasn’t there.

The two weeks since Ruby disappeared in the night was the longest time the blonde hadn’t seen her sister before, and it gave her too much time to think about how she missed her. It was Yang’s job to look after her baby sister, and she failed, her and her father thinking Ruby had been dead until they got a letter saying she was at the castle. Yang had no real idea of what happened, but… it killed her inside.

Wiping a wet spot near her eye, Yang ran to join her father and uncle for eggs.

The sun raised higher as the morning progressed, eventually a carriage from Vale painting itself onto the country farm picture. The farmer girl and farmer father stood just outside of the doorway as they waved goodbye to Qrow, Taiyang’s double barreled shotgun resting comfortably in the nook of the darker man’s arms. “You see any thieves, or any bandits, you make sure and blast them good ye hear?” Taiyang gestured at his brother by law, “I don’t want to find no missing pigs when I get back!”

Qrow slouched against the doorway with a grin. “I never make promises. If they make better company than you old man I might have to keep them around, maybe put the farm in their name, who knows?”

“Ooh,” Yang looked around the carriage cabin in wonder, “so pretty!”

Her father stepped in after her, also impressed by the red wood lacquering and fabrics, but not as much as his daughter. “Like you, I grew up on a farm, this would have impressed me thoroughly as a kid, but when my father took me with him to Beijing, seeing the outsides of buildings alone from the inner districts left me in a spot of fantasy. Aye but when I stepped inside some of them…” he shook his head in such a way that dismissed the cabin without displaying disappointment but rather apathy, “There are places in the world you can’t even imagine.”

She shrugged with enthusiasm. “I am dismayed father, do you hold so little faith in my ability to imagine?”

He shrugged back with enthusiasm. It was a mystery where Yang got the habit from.

Down along the country road, they eventually came upon the main road that held most of the traffic in the country, people traveling in both directions from Germany to Austria and visa versa, Bavaria being the middle ground to do so. They for the most part enjoyed the ride, spending a great deal of their time looking out the window at people as they walked along to or through town, recognizing a good number of them and waving. Any stranger would ignore them and eye the horses and the nicely spoked wheels.

Except one.

The blonde spotted this stranger who seemingly glared at her as they rode along. Wild black hair framed the face of this young lady and went down her back, the tips dipping in the quiver she wore. Amber eyes stared back, angry for a reason Yang might never know. Possibly. She noted that the girl was walking in the same direction as their carriage, and might be going to Vale for all she knew. 

Where ever she was going, those angry eyes would not be forgotten soon.

Later that morning and inside the manor grounds, Ruby stood motionless. Left foot forward and rifle sights up to her cheek, she stared down her next victim. Exhaling slowly, her finger squeezed the trigger, and the gun cracked to a puff of smoke.

The ceramic disk shattered into a fine powder which drifted along into the head wind.  
“Adequate shot, my lady,” commented the butler Ren, whom of which offered her another paperwad. 

Ruby, donning her hunter’s clothes, took the paperwad graciously, but looked to the man with a uncomprehending stare, mouth hanging to the side.

“Pardon me, I mean to say you have the requisite marksman skills to justify having a rifle.”

“Uhm…”

Ren faintly sighed.

“It was a good shot, my lady.”

Understanding traveled her face. “Oh! Thank you sir!” Happy with herself, she began the process of loading the next bullet. She dropped the rifle’s stock to the top of her boot, put the paperwad to her mouth, and bit off the marked end. She mindlessly spat the crumbled piece away, Ren catching it effortlessly and pocketing it. Ruby tipped the open wad over and into the muzzle, the powder tapping along on its way down, then the lead ball plopped in and sat still an inch inside. Grabbing the loading rod, she shoved the ball down until it would go any further. Refastening the rod, she lifted and leveled the rifle, drew the hammer back, pulled a blasting cap from her pocket and placed it on the hammer, and aimed.

“Forty four seconds is quite good for a beginner, my lady,” Ren noted, nodding.

“Heh, thank you sir. Say… I never caught your name.”

“Ren, my lady.”

“That’s… that’s a pretty name.”

“Thank you, my lady.”

“What was your father’s name, or maybe family name?”

“Lie.”

She lowered her rifle and looked to him sympathetically. “No, you don’t have to lie about it, it’s okay.”

He blinked twice. “Pardon me, my lady, my name is Lie Ren.”

A little flustered, the girl dropped her head to hit the top of her rifle. “I’m so sorry, I’m still adjusting to all of this,” she resumed her firing stance and fired, another clay target disappearing. “I never thought I would be doing… any of this, it is all quite frankly beyond me.”

A small smile. “But it would seem your current target is not beyond you,” he glanced to the ever decreasing targets. “Your progress in weapons has been smooth and brisk, something you might’ve not thought possible just a week ago. It might be apt to say that within time, the other new facets of your life will fall within your scope of expertise should you give time the chance to first arrive.”

Ruby covered her mouth, even more so flustered. “Oh sir! I do not deserve such praise!”

The butler chuckled as he handed her another paperwad. “That remains to be seen, my lady. My lord chose you, and my lord is a very picky person.” He then held a finger to his mouth and leaned in somewhat, “But don’t let Weiss know I said that.”

She giggled. Her giddy laughter came from a place of genuine warmth, a place that relished the thought that perhaps she made a new friend. Every other time she had seen the man, he had been dead still and even more still dead quiet, but he seemed to have just opened up to her in confidence. That meant one more person she could pass in the hallways that she didn’t feel was looking judgingly in her direction.

Her thoughts didn’t travel too much further when a familiar voice screamed her name. Yang was running to her.

Ren walked away from the scene, and took a spot behind the just arriving Jaune. Both watched as both of the girls cried into each other’s shoulders, hugging tightly and fighting to spin the other around. “She hit three clay pigeons in a row at 20 yards.”

Jaune sighed as he scratched his forehead. “You don’t have to rub it in.”

The smaller man suppressed a chuckle. “Sir, I misunderstand what you imply, I simply state she is overperforming, at the very least, compared to the efforts of a particular knight you are acquainted with.”

“Hold your tongue you musty nook-shotten jack-a-nape.” They both chuckled. Ruby and Yang were talking over each other about missing the other through tears. “To be fair, my dear Ren, she performed better than you, aye?”

“It would be rude and above my position to speak less than perfectly of my superiors, but to say otherwise would also be a falsity.”

“I need not look Ren, but I know if I did, I would find the cheekiest smirk on your clever little mouth. Correct me if my understanding is less than true… never mind. If I were a gambling man, in a gunfight, I would bet on you then, correct?”

“If you were a gambling man, my lord.” 

At this point, it seemed that Yang was already gossiping in hushed whispers to her sister about all the handsome noblemen, possibly Jaune included, that she had passed on the way here, and was teasing the younger of the two about her technically living with them.

“Before I forget, butler whose name escapes me,” Jaune shot the asian man a mutual sly smile, “whatever you do, don’t correct Lady Ruby on the gender of our lord.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it, lord of questionable lineage, it would be a grievous sin to prevent the world from witnessing our lord Weiss’ reaction to ‘his’ protege’s continued misconception.”

Jaune shook his head with a tired grin. “You’re a terrible butler.”

Ren shrugged. “Wasn’t my first occupation. Still adjusting. You’re a terrible knight.”

 

-End Chapter 6-

Sorry I disappeared there for a while. If you happen to enjoy my stories (craziest timeline confirmed) you should check out my new story, “Miracles of Ancient Wonder.” I already have it written out to like, 10 chapters, but am only now posting. Seriously, plz, check it out, I beg of ya, thank you all for your continued patronage.


	7. Chapter 7

If Weiss had a choice, she would kick in the doors. As it was, she had to settle for turning the polished door knob and entering the overly lavish dining hall like a civilized person. She at no point believed that a decedent lifestyle was sinful or even one not worth living. Weiss cherished having people wait on her hand and foot, comfy beds, gourmet feasts, and so on, but everything needed a purpose, and her struggles in the night made the luxury all the more enjoyable.

But her father’s dining hall disgusted her.

Decadence didn’t describe the pride and greed that suffocated the room. Multiple portraits of her father done by the finest artist with purple curtains threaded at the ends with gold tassels adorned the walls above greco–roman styled stands for other items of fine art. Unused suits of armor guarded the spaces in between the paintings and two, not one, but two chandeliers with too many white quartz gems dangling lit the room. Lion skins that no one in the family hunted laid sprawled in front of a fireplace of polished marble. It looked good, Weiss appreciated that, but she knew her father went out of his way to make sure to buy the most expensive possible marble, regardless of how it looked.

That feeling extended to the whole room. Parts of it looked fine if not great, but it was all an act to portray power and wealth to any dignitary that walked in. Perhaps to prove to Jacques himself that he had more power than he actually did.

“Oh my darling, I do wish you would dress like a proper lady during our dinners,” spoke Jacques eloquently behind a crystal glass of red wine.

Weiss strutted passed the empty end of the long carved table to pull a seat to the right of her father and opposite of her sister, Winter. She removed her dirtied white hunter’s tricorn and dropped it on the seat beside her, then brushed some of the dirt from her new and freshly dirtied hunting leathers. “I was placing the monthly traps.” The heiress looked down to her plate of garnished roast, pre-cut in slices for her on a silver platter.

“A monotonous task, I’m sure, I keep telling you that you should have the help do it.”  
She mulled over a response while she gently stabbed the meat and delicately placed it into her mouth. After she chewed and swallowed, she answered. “But father, I need to be the one to check them, and I won’t know where they are if I don’t lay them myself.”

Jacques shook his head with a confident smile. The platinum haired man dressed in a white suit that, unlike Weiss’s clothes, were always clean and spotless. “I still don’t see the point in you hunting the abominations yourself, the men I hired are doing an excellent job keeping the countryside safe. You need to make yourself more presentable for when the ambassadors visit, especially for the dinner party I’m hosting in a weeks time.”

Weiss gritted her teeth. The ‘men’ her father hired were motley to the say the least, and ineffective at large. The worst of them were unconfirmed highwaymen while the most noble of them were under equipped and under trained for the task. Only a duo among their ranks qualified as hunters by Weiss’s standards, and they were kept to guard the manor. Worse yet, she knew that the dinner party was set to occur on the night of the fool moon on purpose by her father so she would supposedly have to attend. “Oh but father,” she retorted with a falsely gentle and polite tone, “I knew Winter would be lovely enough to be presentable for the both of us,” nodding towards her older, stoic, and beautiful sister. 

Winter, dressed in a pale blue gown, laid down her fork and knife, eyes set on her sister. “Weiss, we really do worry when you leave each night, sometimes we are subject to think you might not come back.”

The younger sister winced. She believed Winter’s words, but only in regards to Winter herself. Weiss didn’t pretend to know for sure that her father feared for her own life.

“Yes, what would we be left to do if that happened?” Jacques commented, sipping his wine with a satisfied lick of his lips. “I even promised a certain Cardinal from Winchester that the two of you would meet, I can’t simply break my promises.”

Weiss’s eye twitched as she avoided rolling her eyes. “A Cardinal priest? Bishop? Or… is it a deacon?”

Jacques chuckled. “As the expression goes, ‘you have three guesses and the first two don’t count.’ The context for when one typically uses the expression is different, but in this case it works marvelously.”

Marriage plans. Jacques may as well have just said that this Cardinal was interested in marrying her and her father promised her to him. Then he would have an in to the church. Weiss took a long drink of wine.

“Oh dear me, father, it seems as though I have lost track of the time,” Weiss breathed monotonously. She scarfed down most of the rest of her plate and wiped her dirtied face unceremoniously with a patterned napkin. “I’m late for my etiquette lessons, good heavens.”

Weiss stood up and began walking away from the diner table, only to immediately return to her seat to grab the soiled napkin. Before she even did what she planned to do, both Winter and Jacques let out sad sighs. The youngest of them grabbed the napkin and blew her nose into it, then dropped it onto her relatively untouched silverware.

“Pardon me,” the young heiress whispered. And with that, she left.

She made her way down the hallway, grabbing her wrist with one hand and in the other she clawed at her palms with untrimmed fingernails, the sound echoing in her mind as she gritted her teeth painfully. Weiss had been told that she had anger issues, and that her feelings of rage and righteous indignation far exceeded any of her other emotions, yet that thought only made her more angry. But not as angry as the notion of her father’s perpetual habit of trying to use her. 

Within the hour, she was venting her anger on Jaune, whom took the beating in stride.

“Maybe he’s a nice guy?” offered the knight, now informed of the dinner talk.

Weiss used her metal saber to blade lock his wooden longsword, then kicked him in the hip, knocking him down. “That’s not the point, Jaune!” she almost screamed. She waited as he stood back up, and paced in place. “I am his own flesh and blood!” she grunted, slapping her chest with her free hand, “Just a modicum of compassion would placate me. But no, he just can’t help himself.”

Jaune took a hanging ox stance, then drew an arc over his head and stuck at Weiss with great force to her ‘crown’, or rather a side cut to her head. She punched the blade as it approached her with her pummel, not really seeming to put in the effort of style or grace. Jaune punished her lack of attention with a shoulder check, tackling her and pushing her back.

Weiss gasped. “Did you just?”

He recoiled. “Uhm, no?”

“I’m so proud of you! Unlike a certain someone to certain someone else!” she yelled, taking a proper stance. Taking the initiative, she struck at him rapidly, slashing at his arms, but gave him room to repeatedly block, the blade always stopping just short of his biceps. She leaned into his space, forced him back, then feinted into a double thigh hit. The man let out a ‘yip’ of pain. She dropped her stance, shoulders slouched, and kicked at her feet. 

Looking off to a corner of the room, she mumbled to herself. “What am I whining over? I know he hasn’t cared about me for a long time. He doesn’t care. I’m just a… I’m just a tool to him.”

In a feeling all too familiar to him, Jaune stood there motionless, speechless, and helpless. He just stood there and basked in her solemnity.

The doors to the training hall opened, and a formally dressed Ruby walked in, coattails and all. “Good evening, Lord Weiss,” she greeted her master. “Sir Jaune,” she added, performing something in between a curtsy and a bow.

“Good evening to you too Ruby,” the other woman replied, kindly but absent mindedly. She looked to the wolf girl and relaxed her expression. “Did you finish your reading lesson?”

“Uh, yes, I did, but apparently…” she answered sheepishly, “When I said I knew the characters but couldn’t put them together, I had overestimated my own ability. I uh… my teacher says I still need to learn the letters first.”

The fair skinned heiress looked to her knight with a dour face, then bent her back for a long good stretch. “Well… Rome wasn’t built in a day. I hope your ready for more training however.” Making her way over to the weapons rack, a spear was drawn. “Because before long, the moon will sit high in the sky, and we will be Rome, and our practice now will determine if we are to face Carthage and prevail, or if we are to face the visigoths, and face massacre.”

With skill built over the course of more than a decade, the noble lobbed the spear at lethal speeds passed the knight and almost caught Ruby’s arm. Both of them stiffened and shot scared looks at Weiss. “I expect you to catch the next one.”

-End Chapter 7-


	8. Chapter 8

The hunt began a night before the peak of the full moon, where the clouds rolled over the skies and let down a gentle sprinkle of rain. Ruby rode on a grey horse just behind Weiss’s dirtied white stallion, a gloved hand grasping at her pained chest.

Weiss looked behind her and in the corner of her eye saw Ruby’s clenched hand. “What’s wrong?” she asked, knowing full well the silver concoction she fed Ruby was causing at least a light burn.

Lifting her head, her tricorn no longer concealed her pale face. Long, violent scabs were becoming less severe with time, but her expression was at the moment more pained than it had been days before. “I assume the power of the moon compels me. Is this my soul fighting the curse?”

The princess lifted her lantern at the split in the forest path, the fickle light of her tool casting a weak sphere of visibility in an otherwise black place. If she held it just in front of her and looked back, Ruby’s dark clothing combined with the strict shadows rendered her and her stead invisible to Weiss. “Yes, I would assume your will fighting the bane in yer’ blood would cause a conflict of biles, pain inevitably ensuing,” she lied, “You do well to keep it up of course.”

Time passed as it had in the last three hours and as it had since forever. Ruby didn’t question if they had to do what they had been doing, but she did eventually ask for her master to restate what exactly they were doing. “This time, etch this lesson in deep, I hate repeating myself.”

“Yes sir,” replied Ruby respectfully.

“I set traps in remote spots laced with an incense to lure the beasts. I check each and everyone of them within a few days of the peak of the full moon. If they are caught, I deal with them then, but if my hunt is fruitless, I carry the incense myself on the peak, at which time a werewolf is going to want to hunt most, so much so that a trap might not contain them. This is the last night before we carry the incense. If we are to be deemed blessed with fortune, a snare will be filled.”

Winds blew through the woods like banshee’s whispers, shivers crawling up Ruby’s back. Weiss checked her pocket watch. Almost Midnight.

An animalistic whimper snapped both hunters to rapt attention. Halting their horses, the noble looked back to her apprentice and gestured ‘on me’, then dismounted. Weiss grabbed the silvered longsword from her horse and slung it over her shoulder, giving her the options of a rapier on her right side for her dominant left hand, a revolver on her left side for her right hand, daggers on her coat for either hand, and of course the longsword on her back for a left handed draw. Drawing the pistol, Weiss crouched down to the ground and tip toed closer to the sound, Ruby following a few seconds behind.

They crept over the top of a small rise, the light of the lantern spilling over the top and into the clearing where a lanky half-man, half-monster of mangy grey fur laid with its ankle caught in a bear trap. Ruby gasped. Weiss straightened her back and looked to her partner, then back to the werewolf. “That’ll do just fine then.”

Approaching the creature, Weiss aimed her gun at the beast that just now came out of its pitiful stupor to growl and bite at its soon-to-be executioner. It lashed in her direction, but gained no ground closer to her. Weiss just stared at it, and squeezed the trigger.

A soft gasp, a catch of one’s throat.

Weiss let off the trigger and looked back at Ruby, whom stood still and beyond uncomfortable behind her 20 feet away. “Hmm,” she hummed to herself, eyeing the petrified look of the ex-farmer’s face. Then she pondered the longsword and folded spear she carried. “Alright, this needs to be done, and you need to dirty yer’ hands. Go to your horse, grab the rifle, you’ll be putting it out of its misery. Got that?”

She recoiled. “Y-yes sir,” she replied reluctantly, stumbling as she started backtracking.

The princess looked back to the werewolf, of which still growled and snarled at her like a cornered dog. It was a pitiful monster, thin leathery skin with missing patches of fur, and what fur was there was scraggly and faded. Its limbs were too long and somewhat misshapen, and its teeth were yellowed if there at all.

“So you were the one who turned our miss Ruby, huh?” she asked it rhetorically. She never caught the werewolf from the last month; Ruby had turned and injured her, so that meant the one who turned her was still at large. “A pitiful one like you would explain her weak taint, perhaps?” she mused.

In her thoughts, she looked to the ground. Her eyes glazed over the scattered autumn leaves, dirt, and fallen bramble that bore evidence of the beasts feet and hands, but she remained focused on Ruby’s cursed origins. Her gaze settled on a partial claw print in a soft patch of ground, and she waited. 

Over the sound of the wind and increasing rain, Weiss heard Ruby returning. With a sigh, she lifted her head and looked at the monster again, and at his foot caught in the trap. As Ruby loaded her rifle, it occured to Weiss that the beast’s feet had a disturbing transformation, where instead of gaining more wolf-like paws where the digits spread out and gained fur, this one’s feet had remained like a human but were stretched out lengthwise, the tendons jutting out of the top. She looked back to the ground at the print she was just staring at.

The hairs on her neck and arm rose. “It’s a different track. Ruby, it’s a different track!” Weiss pulled the hammer on her revolver and took aim at the darkness, spinning around to check every angle.

Ruby started panicking, although it didn’t look as such. “What should I do? Should I do it now?” she asked hurriedly.

“Yes, send the beast to hell, delay no further!” Weiss pulled Ruby to where she stood, just out of reach of the wolf-man, then pushed down on the girl’s head to bring Ruby to a kneel. Weiss stood over her, frantically looking in every direction. 

It took no time to take proper firing posture, but Ruby found that pulling the trigger was far more difficult than she imagined it to be. Suddenly the 7 pound pull weight felt like a hundred, and the creature on the other end of her iron sights seemed less like a monster and more of a victim. Something in her cried out against the action in her muddled mind, a conflict of moral and divine laws scrambled to the pounding of burning blood in her heart.

The decision however, was made for her as a roar erupted from the darkness. In an instant, Ruby’s aim drifted as a tense finger flinched and set off the gun, Weiss made a hasty shot at the blur, the blur charged through them, the trap was ripped open, and both creatures ran off in opposite directions. 

Weiss wasted no time clamoring to her feet, and caught a glimpse of the werewolves as they got away. The other hunter, ears ringing thanks to a gun firing just above her head, staggered upwards. “I got mine, I saw it flinch. Did you get yours?” Weiss said, panting.

Ruby stuttered and babbled as she fumbled to get the implements to reload.

“Ruby!” Weiss shouted hoarsely, impatiently. It did nothing to reveal her gender. “Did you hit it?!”

The girl nodded ‘yes’. “I heard the bullet hit.”

“Alright, both are wounded then, we will get our horses, and we’ll pursue whichever one of the two went due north-east. There’s a farm and barn in that direction, and I suspect the beast will try in desperation to feed.” Weiss embarked for her horse, and let out a groan of pain. The rogue werewolf had knocked them aside in an instant, and the wounds she had acquired from Ruby became intensely agitated. There probably was going to be a new bruise too. It took a moment to steel herself and order her partner, “Stop whimpering, let’s go!”

The rain grew as relentless as the white clad hunter, her garments stained brown with mud in no time thanks to the horse’s gallop. Racing along the roads by lantern light was incredibly dangerous, but she would rather fly off her horse and fight the ground than have to deal with two werewolves in the future. She caught a glimpse of a sign pointing down a branch in the road to a horse ranch, and followed the instruction.

As they rode out of the woods and into a clearing, they could roughly make out a house and a barn in the lap of two tall hills, all black against the dark grey skies, but the house and barn’s wet features sparkled orange to the lantern’s glow. Dismounting, they approach the horse stable’s on the right, both of them noticing the ajar barn door. Weiss took the lead and slipped inside, gun ready to fire.

About five horses shuffled and neighed in panic within their confining stalls, the barn containing twelve stalls in all, a middle aisle with six stalls on either side. In fact, Weiss noticed that the whole barn was slightly rocking to the scared dance the horses played. Once Ruby was in, they closed the barn door the last little bit and Weiss hung the lantern on a hook coming off the loft, a hook she imagined was specifically meant for exactly what she was doing. Drawing her rapier, she ignored the frenzied animals and examined the ground, spotting irregular patterns in the hay scattered on the floor. She couldn’t guarantee it was what they were looking for, but she had to venture a guess.

“I smell blood,” Ruby whispered through gritted teeth. Before Weiss registered what she had said, she reached a hand to Ruby’s heaving chest. The brunette was not only of shattered mind, but seemed to be just shy of agony. The silver concoction was not kind to her.

“Hold on,” Weiss finally responded. “You can smell blood?”

She shook her head. Not in agreement or denial, but to return vision to her eyes. “Yes, its faint, but I can smell it, there’s some there even.” She pointed at one of the hay prints Weiss had suspected.

“Then he is hiding in here.” Weiss went silent and crouched.

Encroaching towards the back of the barn, Weiss got a sick feeling in her gut. As she passed the second stall out of six on that side, that meant that there were four chances for a sudden fight to break out. The lantern casted light behind them, meaning that one side of each stall was partially lit, but the shadows were pitch black, and hid all. As she passed the third stall, she pondered the horrifying thought that maybe there was a werewolf crouching in the shadow, and when she saw the shadow, she wouldn’t be able to see the werewolf in it, effectively ending her life there.

Both fourth stalls had horses in them, but she approached the fifth set of stalls even slower than the others. Ruby’s shallow breathing was starting to eat at her nerves. She feared that she wouldn’t be able to hear the monster’s breathing over Ruby’s and the horses combined noise. The wind and rain didn’t help either.

The fifth stall was empty.

The wind and rain was actually getting louder, Weiss noticed. Along with a putrid smell. Heart pounding in her ears, she peered into the last set of stalls, light barely reaching them at all.

The window on the right side was open.

A long sigh of relief, followed by a new fear. The fear of not knowing.

Weiss gestured Ruby to follow her closely, and she stepped into the stall, noting that the putrid smell was of horse dung that had been shoveled into the far corner. She approached the window, the rain and wind whipping into and around the flapping window panels. The latch had been busted, she saw.

Ruby gasped.

Ruby noticed before Weiss the sound of the barn doors opening. Her reaction alerted Weiss. The latter of the two pulled them into the shadow of the stall.

She immediately regretted her decision. The princess’s nerves got the better of her, thanks to Ruby’s infectious mental state, and put herself at the disadvantage of not knowing what was coming through that barn door. On any normal hunt, Weiss would’ve already had all six shots ready to crucify any beast that dared to show itself at range, but tonight, Weiss was off her game.

The cries of the horses grew louder, more frantic, and the hunters dreaded the probable cause. What killed them was the lack of understanding what was happening however. If a wounded werewolf had come to this barn, left through the window, and if it had just re-entered, why didn’t it start tearing into a horse, or how was it smart enough to circle around the hunters?

They held their breaths to listen to careful steps masked by ambient sounds, careful steps unclear in their weight and length. The horses remained loud, but nothing happened to them, and the steps got undoubtedly closer to them.

Weiss could tell Ruby was losing it. She pulled the girl in close and clasped her glove over her mouth and nose, dropping her rapier. 

The footsteps got closer, and a vague shadow grew larger on the aisle. Were the lantern brighter, the shadow could’ve revealed all, but alas, it was dying.

The horses closer to them cried louder than ever, and the horses by the entrance kicked the walls inside their stalls.

The lantern was hit with a gust from the outside, and blew out.

The footsteps were just in front of the fifth stall adjacent to them. Ruby started squirming under Weiss’s grip. Weiss pulled her hand harder, muffling the poor girl’s murmurs to nothing as she suffocated, the back of her head digging painfully into Weiss’s ribs.

In pitch blackness, Weiss could see nothing but black and the negative afterimages of the barn. Slowly breathing in, she held her own breath one last time.

The footsteps were within arms reach of them, at the entrance of the stall. She couldn’t see it, but she knew something was standing right there. 

It was looking at them.

It had to be.

Over the scent of the horse manure, she could spell blood and the smell of wet dog. Over the sound of horses crying and the wind and rain, she could hear ragged breathing. Over the sensation of Ruby biting through her glove and fractured ribs, she could feel breath on her left cheek. 

It was there.

But neither could see the other. They both were hiding.

With a speed slower than Weiss could’ve ever thought possible, she spent what felt like minutes lifting the end of her revolver to aim at the creature. For what felt like minutes, she sat there, Ruby going limp under her arm, and listened to the sounds of a heaving chest. For what felt like minutes, her lungs screamed at her as she held her breath.

The barn door opened and light illuminated the building as Weiss’s lantern had. Sure enough, the werewolf was sitting right in front of them, looking right at the shadow they hid in. From where it sat however, it couldn’t see them. What it did see was an old man entering the barn with a lamp. 

“What’re you doing on my ranch, vagabond!?” the old man shouted, double barrel shotgun tucked under his arm, “Yer’ scaring my horses!”

The game was up.

With uncertainty removed, Weiss’s fear disappeared.

The werewolf turned in place and started a dead sprint at the now terrified man, Weiss let go of Ruby, whom rolled over as she coughed life back into herself, and the heiress took aim and shot the beast in the back.

It was too little too late though, as the beast shrieked it left a gash across the man’s chest and continued its four legged sprint to the house. The old farmer cried out too before he collapsed to the ground in shock. “Ruby! We’re going, NOW!”

Without checking to see if she was following, the muddy white clad hunter ran to the busted front door of the house. At the entrance room, there was a door going to the main part of the house and a right door going to a lounge room, and a set of stairs on the left where she could see candle light coming down from. An elderly woman in a nightgown peeked around the corner, her half lit face not too different from the man’s after he recognized the werewolf for what it was.

Weiss threw her hand upwards and away, biting at the woman, “Go back up!” She then drew her longsword, but kept her revolver in front of her. As it was, she was blind without a light, but, she had relied on using her sense of hearing to hit a target several times before. With her back to the wall, she slid along the left side, listening to the rummaging sounds of the wolf-man. Dashing around the doorway and sticking herself back to the wall, she could tell he too couldn’t see, the sounds of shuffling chairs and items falling from shelves betraying his location.

Taking confident aim, she took a shot in the dark. A yip signaled a hit, likely at least, and more running. She could tell his body had hit a wall, and what sounded like a shelf fell over, glassware and pottery shattering. Furniture closer to her clattered once more and a gust of wind blew passed her, the front entrance made its own sound as a body brushed passed it.

“Little bitch,” Weiss growled, heading back the way she came. 

She too hit the entrance doorway with her shoulder on her way out, and finally could make out the faintest of a silhouette in the yard. Puddles were gathering on the ground, and every step it took confirmed to her where it was. Weiss took another shot in the dark, but only heard an angry growl this time.

“Shite…” She holstered the gun, and took her longsword into two hands.

Suddenly, she could see the outline of the creature and the green reflection of light in its eyes. The woman from before was on her porch, candle light casting the weakest illumination for either combatant to work off of. And with that light, the creature ran for Weiss on all fours, ready to tackle.

Weiss didn’t stand for it, slashing in time to the left, she caught its snout and forced him into a evasive roll to the side. In a word, she was bullfighting with a sword and limited vision. It made another run for her, and this time she swung to the right, intersecting its jaw and throwing him to the side once more. It rolled like a dog and limped back into a fighting stance.

She watched, she listened.

The woman on the porch was holding her hand to her mouth and whimpering. Not important. The rain dribbled off of the tip of her hat, and was washing some of the mud off of her leather clothes, and the wet autumn wind was chilling her to the bone. Not important, infact, it took some of her attention away from her aching sides. Boot steps were coming from the barn, meaning Ruby, possibly helpful. The beast was growling, but blood was in its throat, she could hear the bubbles forming, and it had whines mixed in as well. It was nearing its limit. Good.

As long as she held her high stance, it kept a distance from her. Also good. In fact, in this open arena, it couldn’t get close to her as long as she kept her timing perfect.

“Ruby! If you’re there, take the shot!”

She wouldn’t have to risk it though if Ruby finished it now. This would be a good chance for Ruby to grow, Weiss thought. The problem with the thought was however, Weiss never thought while on the hunt, and this whole contemplation distracted her from the werewolf, whom made a mad dash to the sound of Ruby cocking her rifle.

It could cover much more distance far faster than the hunter, and tackled Ruby within two seconds, tackling the girl. Her rifle flew from her hands and she was on her back, beast snapping at her face, only her outstretched arms keeping his fangs away from her neck. His claws hit at her upper body, while his kicking legs cut into her pants and shins. She screamed and pushed, fear bleeding into anger, anger bleeding into bloodlust.

Ruby tucked her knees to her chest and kicked into the werewolf’s body, creating distance, then she grabbed its wrists, preventing it from further cutting her up. Clamoring to her feet, she pushed with her whole body against the creature, feet slipping in the mud as it did the same to her. It tried ripping its wrists from her grasp, but she adjusted herself and grabbed his hands instead.

Its inhumanly long fingers reached over her own and dug long nails into the back of her hand, growls intensifying. She growled back, and in a burst of fury, wrenched down with her hands. The beast cried as its hands broke backwards, and it fell to its knees. A moment later, Weiss’s longsword pierced it in the back, through its heart, and out the chest.

It slumped down, all tension releasing.

Weiss drew her blade and sheathed it. “Christ, that was excellent Ruby!” she exclaimed, a rare smile plastering her face. “I knew you had it in you!”

Ruby, panting, kept pushing into the creature and fell on top of it so they both laid in the grassy puddle. 

The standing hunter wiped her nose, chuckled, and gave a hearty thumbs up to the lady standing on the porch. “Alright, up and up, we have a few things we need to do fi–”

The tainted hunter lunged at Weiss, dagger drawn. The latter dodge, just barely, the tip of the knife catching in her coat. As Ruby regained her posture for another go, Weiss heard that oh-so familiar growl.

A gunshot.

Weiss holstered her revolver as Ruby stumbled backwards, clenching at her side. The smoke lingered in the air a moment before the rain washed it away. A more human groan of pain came from Ruby this time. “Maybe next time, child.”

By a sad gait, Weiss walked up to the porch where the woman stood quaking in place. The hunter padded the lady’s shoulder in a feeble attempt to ease her, then walked inside. “I would like a drink, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course, Heir Schnee!” she whimpered, scooting inside just behind weiss. As small as the elderly woman was, she was just as tall as Weiss, and just as thin. Where Weiss had platinum hair bordering on whitish-silver, the lady had salt and pepper, though predominantly grey hair. The similarities had no meaning, but it amused Weiss to think she had so much in common with the elderly at her young age. The amusement however faded as quickly as it came. Weiss didn’t look forward to what she had to do.

The lady laid a candle on the table in the lounge room, and lit it with her own, then disappeared into a closet to fetch Weiss’s drink. The other, Weiss, took a seat and kicked up her boots onto the table, and removed her gloves. Moments later, a red porcelain cup of wine was set beside her hand, and the woman sat adjacent to her at the dark plain wooden table. “My husband, he went outside to check on the horses because their cries awoke us. He is safe, yes?” she pleaded for an answer.

Weiss stared at the ceiling, and watched the shadows casted by the wall ornaments dance to the candle’s flickers. “Of course,” she lied, “We told him to hide in the barn.” A long drink of wine found its way to Weiss.

A sigh of relief from the woman. “Thank the heavens. Ah! But Heir Schnee, I absolutely have to ask…” A minute passed in silence, aside from the elements outside.

“Speak,” she whispered.

“Your partner… he’s… he’s one of them, isn’t he? Or… was one of them, I’m sorry.”

Weiss sighed. “Knowing… him, he’s probably still alive, that one shot wouldn’t kill a werewolf.”

The lady gasped. “A werewolf hunter, I mean, a hunter of werewolves that is one themself! That’s… unbelievable.”

“It is.” This woman saw what had happened, and Weiss knew she wouldn’t be able to wave her hand and remove the evidence. Knowledge of what she was, for lack of better terms, experimenting with was dangerous to have out in the world. There were people just as dangerous as the werewolves roaming about afterall. 

“Heir Schnee, what’s wrong, why do you look so pale?”

If Weiss herself didn’t want to be hunted down for heresy against the established order, Ruby could only be discovered to have the taint only after proving she could control it and possibly utilize it. Tonight had been a failure, and Weiss’s prospects for the future had no promise from what she had seen.

“Do you need something to eat, my lord?”

But it wasn’t a complete loss, she thought, Ruby had the strength, the instinct, and while she was nowhere near helpful, there was potential. At this point, if any of this got out, Weiss would be in trouble regardless of if she got rid of Ruby now, meaning her only option was to persevere. Leaving Weiss with only one safe option tonight.

“Do you need time to yourself, my lord, I’m sorry for pushing.”

 

“Oh uhm… what is your name?” Weiss receded from her thoughts.

“Mine, my lord? Emma, if it interests you.” The woman seemed flattered by the question.

“Do you have children, Emma?”

A sad chuckle. “No my lord, Walter and I were never blessed with children, but we’ve made do with each other. The farm hands your father sends are most helpful too when the season for horse breeding and handling comes ‘round too.” 

No children. That made it easier. In addition, at their age, no relatives would come looking. “I’m sorry.”

Weiss’s gun shot one more time.

The pale hunter stumbled out of the door, pale not only in clothes but in skin, save the red on her face and hands. Barely making it down the porch and to the overflowing trough, Weiss dropped to her knees and plunged her hands and face into the trough, hat falling off and floating atop the water’s surface. 

Pulling out, the girl scratched and scrubbed her hands and face, trying desperately to get the blood of an innocent off her own skin. For once, she understood how Ruby felt, and rubbed at her hands until they were raw. She whimpered, felt sick, vomited, and kept trying to scrub her sin away, but it would not leave, not ever.

After she had the chance to calm just a little, she walked to the barn and found the old man where they had left him. He was asleep, wounded but asleep, and eventually he would turn, and she would have to hunt him. Weiss dragged him into the house, and did all she could to avoid the room with Emma in it.

Back outside, she whistled loudly, and both horses came running to her. She lifted an unconscious Ruby onto the proper horse, tied her to the saddle, and hooked the horse’s reins to the back of her stallion. Going inside the barn, she opened the stall gates and slapped each of the horses so they would flee, then she retrieved her lantern. Heading back into the house, she found two lamps with oil in them, and lit both. She broke one lamp in the barn, and the other in the house. Between the hay and the dry wood and furnishings, the residence was set ablaze within minutes.

Evidence removed, Weiss decapitated the werewolf, took the head and placed it in a burlap sack that hung off the side of her stead. Job done, she returned them all back to Vale.

-End Chapter 8-


End file.
